


The First Woman In The World

by Mangaluva



Series: When Pandora's Box Is Opened [2]
Category: Magic Kaito, 名探偵コナン | Detective Conan | Case Closed
Genre: F/M, Lots of backstory, almost all of the characters listed above don't appear until the last few chapters, companion fic, it will make no sense towards the end, lots of timeskips, really don't read it without reading When Pandora's Box Is Opened, the ones dealing with the present day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-15
Updated: 2015-01-27
Packaged: 2018-03-07 18:07:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 22
Words: 28,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3178097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mangaluva/pseuds/Mangaluva
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Companion fic to "When Pandora's Box Is Opened". The story of Eta and Ushi. Ten thousand years ago, a star fell to earth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This chapter originally published alongside Chapter 38: Fear

**_ Ten Thousand Years Ago _ **

Eta carefully picked her way through the woods, running as fast as she dared. She wanted to be first to get to the star. A star had fallen, she had _seen_ it, a flash in the sky that had fallen to earth. She did not know if anyone else had seen it, but she wanted to get to it first.

Suddenly, there was a hole in the trees; there was a hole in the _ground_ , a huge dent in the earth that had not been there before. The earth in it was burnt, like the earth under a fire pit. She carefully climbed down into it, where something shone at the bottom.

She reached down for it, a little tentatively. After all, stars were light, like fire, so perhaps they _were_ fire? The ground was scorched, after all. And as everyone did, she had learned when she was a child not to pick up fire. She still had a scar on her palm from when she’d tried, along with all of the other little wounds and scars that came from the life of the hunter-gatherer. It wasn’t fire, though. It was a little stone, but it was an odd colour, red and shiny and a little bit clear, like ice. And when she dug it out of the earth and the light of the moon touched it, it glowed.

It glowed bright red, and the red glow grew until it flooded around the stone in the little hollow at the bottom of the crater. Eta reached out, wondering if the light would burn her, but it was cool and soft, like liquid—in fact it _was_ liquid, pooling around the little stone. Eta pulled her hand out of the little puddle, staring at the crystalline liquid in wonderment, and suddenly, on a strange, wild impulse, brought her hand up to her mouth and licked it.

It tasted sharp but sweet, and slipped coolly down her throat. She cupped her hands to scoop up more of the liquid and drank more deeply. Though the liquid was cool, it made her stomach warm, and that warmth slowly spread to the rest of her body. She suddenly felt stronger, the world becoming crystal clear, as if all her life she’d been seeing through a fog. Suddenly she noticed all of the little sounds of the forest at night, the sweet scent of the trees and grass and the harsher scent of the scorched earth, saw like it was daytime, her night vision sharpened perceptibly.

She knew what the liquid was now. It must be a spirit drink, giving one the senses of the animals. She knew that dogs could smell better than people—they always knew before people did that there were wolves close to the village, and their noses twitched when they did, so they must smell them. They heard better as well. And lots of animals could see as well at night as if it were day. So the spirits had imbued her with animal powers through this drink. It was amazing. She ought to share it!

She looked doubtfully down at the little pool. There didn’t seem to be a lot. Perhaps she should only share it with one other person. When she had decided that, she knew at once who she would share it with. Of course it would be Ushi. He was handsome, and he was fast and strong as well—he was one of the best hunters, even though he was one of the youngest, better than everyone except Bear. The old man might have had another name, a long time ago, but he was called Bear now because he could even take a bear down all on his own. Some of the hunters said that animals would walk up to him and wait patiently to be killed, but Eta didn’t know if this was true. She was a woman, so she’d never been on a hunt.

If she shared the spirit drink with Ushi, he might make her his woman. The thought made Eta happy as she ran through the woods, faster than she had before, slipping through the dark and treacherous forest as easily as if it was the worn road to the lake. Ushi was now old enough to choose a woman, and all the girls wanted it to be them, but he had chosen no-one yet. All of the other girls would surely be jealous if he chose Eta!

“Eta? Is that you?”

Eta halted in shock as Ushi appeared on the road in front of her. “Ushi?”

“It is you,” he said, lowering the spear that he’d raised defensively when Eta had leapt out of the trees before him. “I did not recognize you for a moment... you seem different.”

“I found something wonderful, Ushi,” she said excitedly. “A star fell to earth... do you want to see it?”

“What?!” he said in shock. “You found a star in the earth?”

“Yes!” Eta said, tugging his hand. “Come see it!” She started to run, and he followed her. She was surprised to find that she was running faster than him now, even though he was a man, far taller and stronger than her. She actually had to slow a little so that he could keep up. It annoyed her, somehow. Ushi had always been handsome and strong. How could he seem so weak to her now? Well, once he had drunk some of the spirit drink he, too, would be strong, as strong and fast as she was now.

Ushi stared in amazement at the crater, climbing carefully down the scorched earth. Eta had once climbed carefully too, but now she ran, as sure and graceful as a deer. She ran to where the little stone was sitting in a small hollow in the centre, the glistening red liquid still in a pool around it. She glanced up at the sky. Sunrise would come soon. The stars disappeared at sunrise, so perhaps this would too. They had to hurry. “Look, Ushi! The star!”

“It’s a little stone?” he said in surprise. “What is this liquid?”

“Drink some, Ushi,” Eta encouraged him. “It’s so sweet, and it makes you feel so strong.”

“You drank some?” Ushi said, tentatively scooping some of the liquid up. “Is that why you seem so different?”

“Yes,” Eta said. “The world looks so different now... so beautiful.” Ushi smiled.

“Perhaps because so do you,” he said. Eta felt her breath catch. “To beauty.” He drank deeply.

Eta could _see_ the change, like she hadn’t been able to watch it in herself. His whole body glowed faintly red, and something of that glow stayed even as the red faded, highlighting his muscles, suddenly harder than before, the new sharpness to his pupils, his hunting scars and everyday sores and injuries fading away. It was then that Eta looked at her hands and realized that her scars, too, had been healed. The huge silver burn in her palm was gone, leaving only pale, smooth flesh. Ushi looked up at her in amazement.

“Everything does look amazing,” he said as he stood, holding out his hand. “Especially you.”

Eta felt a pull for him, like she had every time she had seen him; the yearning to be close, to be near to him, forever and ever, a yearning that fed on the red glow inside of her and grew...

He pulled her close, pressing his lips to hers. She felt herself suddenly growing weak again, her new strength seeping from her, but in a good way; she wanted him to hold her close, to be weak in his arms forever, to feel this shared magic...

“ _Everything_ is amazing now,” he whispered. “You truly found a gift of the spirits, Eta.” Then he looked up sharply. “The sunrise!”

Eta looked around at is as well, seeing light slowly pour over the mountaintops, falling gradually through the trees. She could only stare in wonder, as if it were the first sunrise she had ever seen. Then she gasped. “What will happen to the star?”

They both turned to look at the little red stone. When the light touched it, the red liquid boiled, rising and writhing like a living thing, wrapping around the stone like a cocoon around a caterpillar. Ushi reached out to pick it up. Now it was a clear stone, like ice, but hard and warm. The liquid had turned into a hard shell.

“We should show this to the elders,” Ushi decided. “Surely it is a gift from the ancestors.”

They ran back to the village, as fast as each other now, Ushi holding the little star in one hand, Eta’s hand in the other. The early risers of the village only stared as they ran into the village, begging to speak to the elders.

The elders were amazed, and agreed that since it had fallen from the sky it was a gift from the ancestors. After all, the ancestors lived in the sky, every star an ancestor watching over the people. The gift was telling them that Ushi should be the new headman. He had found it, so clearly the ancestors had chosen him. Eta knew that she had found it really, but a woman could not be headman so she said nothing. It did not matter, anyway. Ushi did choose her as his woman, and wife of the headman was the highest position that a woman could hold, although some of the elder women seemed to control the village more than the headman did. She and Ushi were together, and she was happy.

Ushi was headman for a long time. A _very_ long time. After some decades, they came to the conclusion that they were not aging at all. They were not growing old like the elders, their hair grey and limp, their skin wrinkled and yellowed. They were as young and strong as they had been the day that they drank the spirit drink, and as the years turned to decades, and the decades to centuries, they remained so. Their strength never faded, and their injuries healed—one terrifying day, Ushi had been mauled by a bear on a hunt, but after two days’ rest he had not a scar. They were immortal.

Eta’s one sadness was that, somehow, she could not bear children. They did everything that other couples did—thanks to their spiritual strength and flexibility, probably more—and yet she never grew a child. She never even bled any more, as all girls did before they became mothers. It was as if her body had frozen. Ushi did not mind. Men only needed sons, and only needed them as heirs, and Ushi would never need an heir, and so she did not complain, but secretly it made her sad to know that she could never grow a child, never hold a baby in her arms and call it hers, never see it grow. Over centuries, she saw women having babies, and those babies laughing and playing as they grew, their laughter the most beautiful sound she could imagine. Then those babies would become adults, and they too would have babies of their own, the cycle continuing, a cycle that Ushi and Eta were no longer a part of and never would be.

So in her dreams, Eta created her children, a brave little boy, a loving little girl. In her dreams, she held them and played with them, heard their laughter and wiped their tears. For centuries, she cared for her tiny children in her dreams. Some days, she longed for night to fall so that she could sleep and be with her children. But she said nothing to Ushi. He was a man. He would not understand.

For millennia, their village grew into a town, and Eta and Ushi watched it all- watched the ancient forest give way over centuries to a growing town and the need for farmland, saw new tools evolve, saw the world slowly change. And the whole time, the little star sat, wrapped in cloth, in a box in their ancient house.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was released alongside Chapter 43: Unknowing

**_ Eight Thousand Years Ago _ **

Eta coughed as she awoke, the air suddenly thick and foul. She slowly sat up, pushing aside a log of wood, which had perhaps once been a supporting beam of their house, but now was only a burned and broken mess, as was their town.

“Ushi?” she cried. “Ushi!”

“Eta?”

“Ushi!” she half-sobbed, running over to him. She tripped over something, and he caught her in his arms. She glanced down at what she had tripped over and gasped as a wave of nausea hit her. It was an old woman, one of the elders, her head almost separated from her body. Eta sobbed in Ushi’s arms as she took in what had become of their town—burned buildings, rubble, and everywhere, bodies, many with their head smashed in or limbs severed.

“It was another town,” Ushi said gruffly, angrily. “They stole all of our animals, and our harvests, too. Their crops must have failed. Worse...” He held her close, rubbing her back to subdue her sobbing. “They took the star.”

“What?!” Eta cried angrily. “How dare they?!”

“We have to go find the other town,” Ushi growled. “It might only be a couple of days away.”

“Of course,” Eta agreed. “But we must bury everyone first. They cannot sleep if they are being devoured by birds and animals.”

Ushi wanted to go after the star straight away, but Eta insisted. She had known these people, known their parents, known their grandparents, known all of their ancestors for a hundred generations. She could not stand to let them be devoured by wild animals.

They salvaged or fixed what tools they could, and Ushi set to work digging a huge firepit while Eta collected scrap wood. Then they began piling in the bodies, the elders on the bottom where they could support everyone else, and the children at the very top. Eta kissed their foreheads and closed their eyes as she laid them to sleep. They looked so oddly peaceful. Eta wondered what it would be like to die, as someone who never would. She had come close in the attack. That sickle to the head, she knew, should have killed her. Instead, she had simply blacked out while her head healed. Ushi, too, had holes and slashes in his clothing, stained with blood though there were no longer any wounds beneath.

As she worked, Eta thought of her dream. She had not only been playing with her children, but hundreds, _thousands_ of others. Now she realized that it was the children of the village, and all of the villagers as they had been as children. Then, a few at a time at first, then all of them, they had walked away into a Shadowland where Eta could not go. Only her children had stayed with her, insisting that it was a bad place that she didn’t want to go to anyway.

Finally, she laid the last burnt baby in its mother’s arms, feeling a sort of sick jealousy of the woman who could now hold her baby forever. Ushi helped her stack wood around them all, and then he lit the fire.

The whole task had taken two days. They hadn’t slept. It was something neither had confronted before, but they didn’t have to sleep, not if they didn’t want to. They hadn’t eaten either, and while Eta felt a little skinnier she didn’t feel weak. The spirit drink had made them something special, something more than human.

Something _vengeful_.

As Eta watched the remnants of her town burn, she felt a fury, something that she’d never felt before in their peaceful world. She saw a thousand children burning, and she wanted the ones that had killed them to pay. She wanted to force them into the Shadowland kicking and screaming, make them feel the fear that the dying children had surely felt. She was _angry_.

And she was strong enough to do something about it.

“Let’s go find them,” she said quietly. “Let’s get the star and avenge our people.”

“Of course,” Ushi said, holding out a hand to pull her to her feet. She leaned up to kiss him as she stood. “They deserve to pay.”

It wasn’t hard to find the other town. The tracks of the animals stolen from their town left a distinct path through the forest. Three days of travel later, they found it—the other town.

It was huge, twice the size of theirs, with maybe over two thousand people. Eta stared in awe at the sprawling fields, the huge pens of animals, the hundreds of houses built so close together that they shared walls.

“It’s so big,” she whispered. “How do we find the star? Or the people who killed our town?”

“Simple,” Ushi said. “It’s the men that would have come to attack us. So...” his face was hard, cold, reflecting the same anger that had burned in Eta as she’d watched her people burn. “We kill the men until they tell us where it is.”

He walked out into the light of the torches ringing the town, allowing guards to see people approaching. _If they have guards, then they must have attacked a lot of people,_ Eta thought. _Otherwise why would they suspect that they would be attacked?_

“Who are you?!” a man demanded as he took in Ushi’s bloodstained and battered appearance. Many other men stepped forwards, clutching sickles and hand ploughs, anything that could be used as a weapon. Eta stepped forwards, next to Ushi.

“I am the headman of the village that you destroyed five days ago,” Ushi said, his voice booming out amongst the many buildings.

“What?! I thought we killed everybody!” one man said.

Eta felt her hatred reunite. “You did,” she said. “Unfortunately for you, we are not like you.”

“We are so much more,” Ushi said. “But I invite you to try to kill us again...”

One large man, much larger than Ushi, laughed derisively and stepped forwards. “I fear no man, and _certainly_ no woman,” he said arrogantly. Eta saw, around his neck, a stone necklace that had been worn by elders of her village for centuries.

“He deserves to die,” she growled.

“Our minds are one, Eta,” Ushi said, stepping forwards. The man laughed again, and swung his hoe at Ushi. Ushi ducked and reached up, grabbing the man’s arm. The big man’s expression changed to one of anger as he tugged his arm against Ushi’s iron grip, strong enough to carry a whole dead bear. Ushi jerked his arms, snapping the man’s arm with a _crack_ , causing him to howl in pain and drop the hoe. Ushi grabbed it and swung it at the man’s throat, cutting it open. The big man clutched at his throat as he fell to his knees, gasping for air as blood poured from between his fingers. Eta made herself watch his face as he died, saw the pain that he must have inflicted on so many others of her people, watched him fall fearfully into the Shadowland. With a last, desperate gasp, he fell still, his eyes rolling up into his head. Ushi yanked the stone necklace from around his throat, now stained with blood, and tied it around his own. Eta handed him the bloodstained hoe.

“He killed Iro!” another man yelled. “Kill him!”

Dozens more men ran forth, brandishing their tools and yelling angry cries as other ran for their hunting weapons. Ushi slashed out, killing the first one to reach him, and Eta grabbed the dead man’s sickle, eager to join the fight. The men seemed so _slow_ , so predictable, and they were afraid, while Eta and Ushi were _angry_.

It was like a dance; Eta gracefully dodged every swing, every slash, swiping out with a sickle in either hand, severing limbs and throats, ripping skin and guts. She and Ushi were both drenched, partially with their own blood from hits that they could not avoid but had ignored in their anger, and mainly from the blood of their enemies, enough to drench the earth. They felt _powerful_.

“Stop! Please, stop!”

Eta paused, panting with adrenaline and exertion, sickles still raised. Ushi had also fallen still. They were alone, except for the dead littering the ground, the few men left living in flight. The horrified survivors watched as their wounds slowly knitted themselves together. The one who had shouted was an old man, presumably one of the town’s elders. He raised his hands pacifyingly.

“Please,” he begged, “no more bloodshed. Your clan are avenged. We will return the star. Please, do not destroy us all.”

“Why shouldn’t we?” Ushi snarled. “You destroyed all of _our_ people.”

“Elder!” a woman screamed. “It is Han! He sneaked away from the flight and fled with the star!”

“ _What?!_ ” the elder cried, backing away from Eta and Ushi as he shook with fear. “That craven fool!”

“All right,” Ushi snarled, stepping forwards, weapons raised...

... And it was then that Eta saw the children, cowering in a doorway, faces pale and terrified. Mere babies, like those who had been killed in their village...

... Frightened of _them_.

“Stop,” she whispered, dropping a sickle to lay a hand on Ushi’s arm. “We would be no better than them. We will search the village for the star, and should it be gone we will hunt the thief Han to the ends of the earth... but...” she looked again at the red earth and the white children. “... No more blood. Not today.”

Ushi looked down at her for a long moment before nodding, stalking forwards. The people fled before them.

They did indeed almost literally tear the town apart. But there was nothing—only the empty basket where the star had been.

“We will hunt him to the ends of the earth,” Ushi swore as they left the town behind.

“Of course,” Eta said, taking his hand. “We have forever to search, after all.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was released alongside Chapter 48: Reunion Awaited

**_ Seven and a half thousand years ago _ **

“This land is so hot,” Eta sighed, wiping more sweat from her forehead. She preferred walking the dry land at night. She and Ushi were not killed by the heat or lack of food and water like normal people would be, but that didn’t mean that walking across the desert in the heat wasn’t uncomfortable.

They had been travelling for so long, searching every town and village that they passed for Han and the star. After some decades, they realized that he had probably passed on at some point, and the star passed on to others. All they could do was keep searching, wandering wherever their feet could take them in search of their lost star.

“Surely there must be water somewhere?” Ushi said, shielding his eyes as they climbed another dry hill. “It has been so long since we saw the sea. How large can one land be?”

Eta had to wonder. How large _could_ a land be? While they had not found the star in their travels, they had found questions. She had mulled over them many nights. In their wanderings, they had met different peoples, and some did not speak the same language as she and Ushi did. Luckily, she picked up languages fast, but she had to wonder: how many different languages could there be? What made one person label a bowl a “bowl” and another, so far away, call it something different? How many different animals could there be? They had seen many that they had never seen before. Why was there so much water in some places, like the sea, and so little here? And how large could one land _be_?

“Eta,” Ushi gasped, “Eta, look!” Eta scurried up to his side at the top of the dune and gasped happily. A river! A huge, shining river in the middle of the desert!

And... people.

Eta stared as they descended the dune. There was s small collection of odd little houses near the river. They were flat on top, and Eta wondered for a moment why they did not have pools of rainwater on top, until she remembered that it did not rain in this dry land. They half-ran, half-slid down the dune to the little village.

“Hello?” Eta said to the first person they met. His skin was black as pitch and stared at them in incomprehension. She tried a few other tongues until she found one that he recognized.

“You walked across the desert?” he said incredulously. “But no-one can survive that! We only reached so far by travelling by the river!”

“So you have not lived here long?” Eta said, looking over at the curious people who were congregating.

“Five years,” the man said proudly. “We wandered for a long time before that—nomads. But we feel that this land may be blessed. If god-people have come through the desert, then perhaps it is true! One day, we shall be great!”

“I do not doubt that you will,” Ushi said, picking up a handful of sand and letting it pour through his fingers into a little triangular pile at his feet. “You have grown plants from sand!” He looked over at the river. “Or was there forest here once? There are logs in the river.”

“Logs with teeth!” another man laughed. “Those logs will eat you—tear you into little pieces and devour you! The only thing they won’t eat are the huge water monsters! Those are the size of a house and eat our crops!”

“Such a strange land,” Eta whispered. “To be able to live here must be magic.”

“The god-people have blessed us!” the man who had greeted them cried. “Please, stay and eat with us!”

“Of course,” Ushi said. The man walked off to discuss food with the others.

“We’re not really gods, though,” Eta whispered to him.

“No, but I doubt they would believe us if we said that,” Ushi replied, “and if they did, there’ll be no free food and water. Besides, we _are_ so much more than them. And if they believe we are gods, they may tell us about the star if they have seen it.”

That night, they ate around a bonfire with the villagers. The desert was indeed strange, Eta mused. During the day, it was so hot as to fry people alive, which was perhaps why these people were so very dark-skinned, but at night it was freezing.

“We are searching for a treasure of ours,” Ushi explained. “It is a stone, clear like ice but warm and hard. And in the light of the moon, it glows red, like blood. Have you seen such a thing?”

“I have, I have!” a girl cried. “Nomads came by, a moon or so ago. They had such a treasure. It was so beautiful, I will never forget it. Ah, forgive me! Had I known that it belonged to gods, I would have taken it from them!”

“Foolish girl!” the village’s headman cried. “Why did you not share this secret, so that we might have seen this wonder and kept it for the Gods?!”

“Do not be harsh on her,” Eta said soothingly, feeling sorry for the girl-child who was now cowering away from the headman. “It’s only natural for a girl to keep secrets. It is what makes her a woman, after all.”

“Does that mean,” Ushi murmured, a mere breath in her ear, “That _you_ have secrets?”

“Not from you, Ushi,” she sighed. “ _Never_ from you.” She no longer felt any guilt in this lie. After all, it was not really a lie, as she had not denied the dream-children’s existence. She had simply never mentioned them.

Just as she had never mentioned that her dream-children hated the star.

_“If I ever get to be real, Momma,” her little boy said, “I want to get rid of it. It keeps us apart. It will make him evil.”_

_“Ushi isn’t evil, darlings,” Eta said._

_Her little girl shook her head. “He will be,” she promised. “It’s just what happens. You too, unless you remember not to. So we’re gonna remind you, alright?”_

And every night, they did. And every day, she watched Ushi silently, always worrying for the signs of evil, remembering them from the dance of blood so many centuries ago.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was originally released alongside Chapter 53: Silence

**_ Five Thousand Years Ago _ **

“Such a beautiful pot,” Eta said, looking over the delicate piece.

“You want to buy, pretty lady?” the old man asked pleasantly. “It will not be cheap, for such art! Ten loaves of bread!”

“Ten?” Ushi said in shock. “So expensive!”

“There is not much else to be done,” the old man said, shaking his head. “So many children these days—our farm is not enough to feed all of my son’s children! Villages grow fast, and anything that cannot be eaten can only be afforded by those who have plenty to eat.”

“I could not carry such a frivolity,” Eta sighed, though she did long for the beautiful pot. When she was young, such craftsmanship had been impossible. “But we will give you... three loaves if you can tell us...” she turned the pot, tapping a complex picture carved into the side. There was a stone, and the moon, and the stone appeared to be glowing. “...what _this_ is.”

“Ahh, that is something strange that I saw two moons ago,” the old man said. “A trader displaying something precious to another... it glowed red as blood in the light of the moon! The other trader gave him much bread for it!”

“Do you know where we can find either of these traders?” Ushi demanded. The old man scratched his head. Eta piled two more loaves of bread on the pile before the old man, having already learned that people often had a better memory if they had an incentive to have a better memory.

“One is Shiro,” he said thoughtfully. “He builds houses, mostly—and many are needed!—but he often finds odd things while searching for materials, and he trades these for food. He might know where the stone is now... Are you interested in it?”

“ _Very_ ,” Ushi said. “Thank you for the information.”

Shiro, as it happened, was an inquisitive young man who was indeed building a house when they approached him.

“Wow, you were even gonna offer _fish_ for it?” he said longingly. “I haven’t tasted fish since I was a little kid. We live too far inland now. Awww, if I’d known, I wouldn’t have traded it to that guy... he said he was going north. You might be able to catch up to him. Hey, if I ever see it again someday, I’ll hold onto it, and maybe you folks can come back, huh?”

“We might,” Eta said. “Sayonara.” She sighed, rolling her neck and clutching her bag of bread as they wandered away. Since they didn’t really need to eat, they had taken to only acquiring and carrying food to trade for information. They always seemed to be skirting too far behind the star; they could never quite catch up to it. Eta had suggested that they settle down, and perhaps it would pass by them again—they didn’t seem to need it, anyway. They still healed easily and had no need to eat or sleep...

But they did need it.

It had taken millennia to notice, but tiny changes were taking place. Five thousand years after they had first drunk that crystal liquid, Eta realized that her senses were slowly dulling. She could not hear for miles around as she once could; she could no longer smell a fish in a stream, nor see at night as though it were day. Her senses were still far superior to any normal human’s, but not what they once were.

The healing had slowed, too. What had once taken a day to heal now took two. It wasn’t noticeable, since they rarely had to fight, only bandits and wild animals, but it was still noticeable. Against her unfading memories, it was noticeable.

 _Which means that we are slowly becoming human again?_ she wondered as they began to walk north. _Given enough time... will we be mortal once more?_

“ _You’re halfway to us, momma,” the little girl said happily._

_“We will come for you one day, momma,” the little boy promised. “You’re halfway there. We’ll come, if you’ll wait for us.”_

_“I will wait forever for you, darlings,” Eta promised, hugging them to her sides._

_“Then we’ll destroy it, momma,” the little girl said happily._

_“That’s right, momma,” the little boy promised, strength sparkling in his shining sky-eyes. “We’ll destroy it and set you free.”_


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was released alongside Chapter 58: Poison.

**_ Two and a half thousand years ago _ **

“They say that the Persians are coming, you know,” the young man muttered worriedly. “They will kill us all...”

“I’m sure it’s just rumours,” Eta insisted, smiling sweetly. She and Ushi had taken to splitting up to search for information whenever they reached towns now. They grew so big these days, making their long-gone town of a thousand people seem a pitifully tiny village by comparison. It made Eta awestruck at how much the world had changed. She felt blessed that she’d gotten to see it.

Another reason for splitting up, aside from covering the huge towns faster, was one that she wouldn’t share with Ushi; the fact that she’d found that young men were _very_ happy to tell her things without any form of payment, so long as Ushi wasn’t next to her, glaring at them. Not that any of them had a chance with her—she was Ushi’s, forever and ever—but they tended to be so much more talkative if they didn’t _know_ that.

“So why’re you suddenly coming into town?” the man insisted. “I tell you, people are fleeing from the farms!”

“I am not fleeing,” Eta promised, laying a hand on his arm. She was quickly growing _very_ adept at using her beauty for her own purposes. “My name is Anesidora. I am looking for something.” She and Ushi had also taken to using different names wherever they went; too many questions and too much distrust were given to foreigners. She had just made up the name, as it sounded reasonably like the names in the local tongue. She was surprised by the malicious cackle behind her when she gave the name.

“Looking for what you unleashed on the world, eh?” an old woman said.

Eta stared at her in surprise. “What?” she said, suddenly flustered. _What I unleashed?_

“Don’t know what your own name means?” the old woman cackled. “It’s the other name of Lady Pandora.”

“Really?” the young man said in surprise. “I never knew that...”

“You young ones, don’t even know your own history,” the old woman grumbled.

“Pandora?” Eta said guardedly. She hadn’t wanted to sound too foreign, but she had no idea who “Lady Pandora” was, and was worried by the fact that the man had easily recognised the name. She probably wasn’t going to get out of this conversation without sounding foreign. “I... lost my parents young. They told me few stories...”

“Why, Lady Pandora was the first woman in the world!” the old woman cackled. “And she was guardian of an urn containing all of the evils of the world... but the nosy fool opened it, and the evils were unleashed! She tried to close the urn, but all she trapped back inside was Hope! And so it is her fault that there is sin and evil in the world... but perhaps, someday, you shall let us have hope too, eh?”

Eta thought of the star that she had found, what she had “unleashed” upon the world; the bodies found with their throats slit by bandits and the cowering children and the dance of blood...

“After what I unleashed,” she murmured, walking away, “I think hope is the least that I owe the world.”

“ _We’ll destroy it, momma!_ ”

 

**_ Two thousand years ago _ **

“What on earth happened here?” Eta said in surprise, looking over the remains of a temple. Broken wood and torn cloth was strewn everywhere, stallholders desperately trying to gather up the remains of their own wares while stealing as much of the others’ as possible.

“Some kind of fight?” Ushi said. “The rest of the town’s undamaged...”

“Not so much a fight as some kind of philosopher going mental,” one of the stallholders muttered angrily. “Haven’t seen one that crazy since the Romans killed off the Greek blokes... bloody Jews... so temperamental.”

“Are there any gem stalls here?” Eta asked, glancing over the destruction. “ _Were_ there any gem stalls here?”

“I think there were a couple up the top end,” the man said, stamping on a hand that was reaching for one of his pots. “They might have legged it already though...”

“Well, we’ll find out,” Ushi said, striding through the wreckage until he reached a man who was hastily cramming shining stones into a canvas bag. “Are you a gem trader?”

“What of it?” the man said sharply.

“We’re looking for a particular jewel,” Ushi said, flipping a gold aureus over to the man. He caught the coin, suddenly looking far friendlier. “And we’ll happily lighten our pockets of many of these to make room for it...”

“I see, I see,” said the gem trader expansively. “Well, can you describe the jewel?”

“It is quite large,” Ushi said, indicating the size of the gem. “And clear, like a diamond. But if viewed at night, it glows red.”

“I’m afraid I have not seen such a jewel, though I would love to,” the man said with a downcast sigh. “Jero might have had some such jewel, but he left already. He said he was heading to Rome, where uppity Jews get fed to the lions!” He cackled unpleasantly. “However, I have many other fine jewels...”

“All are mere rocks compared to our treasure,” Ushi snorted. “Come, Eta. I suppose we are going to Rome.”

“Shouldn’t be hard,” Eta said with a smile. “They do say that all roads lead to Rome, after all...”

The sun was hot and bright in this desert land, so it was no wonder, Eta mused, that it boiled the brains of men until they saw strange things and took strange action. It was giving her strange dreams, as well.

Sometimes, ever since drinking the crystal drink, she’d had another dream, not about her children, mostly formless but still important. That night, as she and Ushi curled together against the freezing night, she dreamed it again. Once, she and Ushi had had no need to sleep at all, but now they needed to do it at least once a week or else they’d collapse. So she had time to dream.

_It was only flashes, mostly formless, perhaps awaiting images as yet uncreated. But there were central points._

_The red sun._

_The crystal cage._

_The falling coin, heads on both sides, a familiar head._

_The coin that turned into an arrowhead._

_The arrowhead that smashed soundlessly through the crystal cage._

_The all-encompassing darkness._

_The light._


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was originally published alongside Chapter 63: The Grim Shadow.

**_ One and a half thousand years ago _ **

“Amazing, isn’t it?” Eta mused, sipping some wine. “How a mighty empire falls...”

“And we can remember when it was all tiny villages,” Ushi chuckled.

“I’ve always liked coming here,” Eta sighed. “It’s one of the few places that I’ve really enjoyed returning to over the centuries...” They had been all over the globe in the past six and a half thousand years, from frozen wastelands with bizarre birds to deserts, from hot jungles to cool forests, but the rapid expansion of multiple cultures on this landmass meant that she and Ushi spent much of their time travelling around in the one large landmass, not needing to cross seas, which meant that they knew the land very well—and the people. They knew where to find inns and taverns which didn’t ask questions. They’d even run into some people, mostly traders and pickpockets, more than once, though they had often been rather frightened to realize that the beautiful people that they remembered from fifty years or so ago had not aged.

“I must say, though, I’ve liked the place a lot better ever since they stopped the animal fights in that damn Colloseum a few years back,” Ushi grumbled. “These days, it takes _days_ to return from being devoured...”

“Try being burned,” Eta said with a shudder. “ _Not_ fun. Then again, we’re not doing this for fun, are we?”

“Hardly,” Ushi snorted. “I can’t help but fear... what will become of us if we do not find it? Can’t you feel it? All the time, growing weaker... closer to _mortality..._ ”

“Well, that’s why we’ve been accumulating _friends_ , isn’t it?” Eta mused. “Why you took over that little crime ring and made it big...”

“When we find the jewel, either we’ll need to buy it or steal it—and in both cases, these people will be useful.”

“So I see,” Eta mused. “So that slave revolt you ran about a century back, when they opened the Salarian Gate during the siege... that was...?”

“I decided that if the jewel was hidden anywhere in Rome, looting Visigoths would have the easiest time finding it,” Ushi said with a smirk and a shrug. “Evidently it _wasn’t_ there at the time, as we had been assured... perhaps we should look to the east again.”

“I suppose so,” Eta thought, sipping her wine again, but inside she knew; they had lost the trail. Too many wild-goose chases, too many lies and misdirections, too many _distractions_ ; they were far off course and she knew it. She almost wanted to sit down and wait instead; wherever they settled, the jewel travelled so much that surely, in time, it would come to them again. But Ushi was a man of the hunter-gatherer age, an age that they had slowly watched being replaced by merchants and farmers. He was a hunter who loved the chase.

She knew the real reason that he had sparked off the slave revolt, as well. They’d already known that the jewel was not in Rome; he had simply loved to watch the invaders swarm the great city, to loot and pillage it, to see a great city fall and know that it was down to him; _he_ had caused such destruction. To see empires rise and fall when he gave the command… he loved that, loved the _power_ of it. He saw it as proof of what he had been saying ever since they had drunk the crystal liquid, so long ago; that they were more than other people, better than other people, almost gods. He loved that feeling, Eta could see.

But to feel above other people... made her feel so alone.

 _Yes. In_ those _dreams, she always ended up alone, after every other shadow had flitted away into the darkness. And it was only once she was alone that the light from the red sun, once so comforting, began to burn._

She drank the last of her wine, saying nothing as Ushi leaned over to talk to a scruffy-looking man; some form of pickpocket, she recalled. What could she say? Ushi was a man. He would not understand.

Once, she had taken that for granted. But even as the world changed, so did she. And often, she felt, there was something more. There had to be.

Even though those around her lived every day knowing that they were drawing ever nearer to the end, they smiled. They were not afraid. They were not the ants that Ushi said they were.

They were _happy_.

“ _Wait for us, momma. We’ll come. Then you’ll be happy, right?_ ”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was originally released alongside Chapter 68: Magic.

**_ One Thousand Years Ago _ **

“This is a beautiful land,” Eta commented. Crossing ice caps, they had come to a separate landmass, where they had only been once or twice before. The jewel was unlikely to be here, as it had sunk somewhere into Eurasian trade circles, but Eta like the land anyway. It was still the land of hunter-gatherers; untouched by cities, still full of the natural forests and rivers that Eta had so loved in their village, long ago. Ushi liked it too; unlike Eta, he had never quite adapted to the development of complex civilisation, only affected an adaption and, when possible, paid or intimidated people into dealing with civilisation for him.

As a wise woman that Eta had known long ago had commented, “When the world changes, there are men fighting for and against the change; and in the background, there are women just getting on with things.”

Ushi fought to control. He in fact carried large sums of money now; across the continents were traders and criminals who knew of him, generally by different names, and jumped when he whistled. They didn’t exactly work for him, but if he turned up and demanded something, they obeyed. It was control, Eta knew. If Ushi felt like it, he could run through every major city in the continent and stir up trouble and revolt as he went. He could get information from the most powerful houses, from within castles of royalty, even.

And they still couldn’t find the damn jewel.

“Ushi, look,” she whispered, pausing as they waded across the bottom of a waterfall. Two children had appeared out of the bushes and had stopped, staring at them.

The taller boy called something. When he repeated it, Eta realized that he was asking, “Who are you?” She had learned the language of a tribe living a few days away, and all of the languages on this continent were somewhat related, but they were still distinct and it always took Eta a while to get used to a new one.

“Travellers,” she called, raising her hand in the gesture of “hello” that she had learned from the last tribe. “We need... place to stay. Can you... offer us a night?”

“Sure, sure!” the other little boy laughed. “You’re no warriors. You look funny, but I bet the spirit lady will want to meet you!”

“Spirit lady?” Eta asked as they climbed onto the shore, the boys leading them through the forest.

“She’s very old,” the taller boy said. “She has special herbs. When she burns them, she sees things in the smoke. She said she saw travellers coming, travellers with hair like sunlight and eyes like the sky!” Eta caught Ushi’s eye and chuckled at this description of their colouring, which was indeed odd in this land where everyone had such dark hair and eyes. Their fair skin tended to stand out as well.

“Maybe she’ll let you see spirit visions!” the littler boy giggled. “All the girls, when they come of age, try to see visions in the smoke to determine who will be the new wise woman, but none have seen anything yet. Hey, maybe if you see something, you could stay and be a wise woman!”

“I am sure you will not want my wisdom,” Eta laughed.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Ushi chuckled. “After all this time, I should think that you’ll be one of the wisest women in the world...”

Eta smiled but did not respond.

Most of the village came out to watch as the little boys led them to the wise woman’s hut; clearly, they were expected, but it was unknown as to whether they were a threat or not yet.

The spirit lady was a wizened little old lady, as tiny as a child. It struck Eta as an odd paradox as she knelt across the firepit from the old lady; she was the one who looked thousands of years old, not Eta. Ushi also knelt, though he seemed to resent deferring to anyone, especially someone who was technically so much younger than them. Eta, however, felt that the woman was in some way older than them; aside from her looks, she had the calm, knowing air of an elder, while Eta and Ushi were forever bound to ignorant, impetuous youth.

“Young ancients,” the old woman croaked succinctly, “you have traversed the world searching for a lost treasure.”

“Indeed,” Ushi said. “Do you know of it?”

“I know it is that treasure which man covets most,” the old woman mused, “and needs least.”

“Please, spirit woman,” Eta begged. “Do you know where it is?”

“I am sorry, but I cannot,” the old woman said with a slow shake of her head. She was so thin that it seemed that any sudden movement would have caused it to drop off. “It leaves a trail of blood and angry ghosts, which the spirits of nature refuse to follow, especially as it is not their artifice. It is alien. It is wrong.”

“Then there is nothing we need from you,” Ushi huffed, bowing his head respectfully though standing to leave. “Come, Eta.”

“Wait a moment,” the old woman said, reaching for a number of leaves, placing them in tiny canvas bags and handing them to Eta.

“You alone still dream of love and life,” she whispered as Eta leant close, out of Ushi’s earshot, reduced slowly over the past nine thousand years. “Should you ever wish to forget of blood and death and begin anew... mix those, and drink them. When it is the only protection you have left... use it.”

“Thank you, elder,” Eta said, an old blessing stirring in her head, and she was quiet for a moment as she translated it into the new tongue. “May you shine forever amongst the stars.”

“It is not only the stars that shine,” the old woman advised as she stood to leave with Ushi.

“Farewell,” Ushi said as they left, but Eta was quiet as she tucked the bags away in her own little bag. Over the millennia, she had become something of a connoisseur for what she widely termed “teas”; teas to calm, teas to heal, teas to bring sleep, teas to paralyze, teas to bring illness, teas to bring death. Ushi only ever seemed interested in the latter ones, but Eta had even taken to making her own, recognizing the properties of certain plants, most fond of making teas to heal different ailments that she never got. Occasionally, whenever Ushi was meeting with “people he knew” and she couldn’t be bothered, she experimented with new recipes, especially curious in a combination that might end the suffering of those infected with leprosy; after all, who better to walk among them and heal them than one who could not catch their disease? But Eta knew that these thoughts, like thoughts of her children, could never be anything more than thoughts. She and Ushi walked a path marked by blood and angry ghosts. She could not change that.

Only prevent it from being elongated.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was originally published alongside Chapter 73: Deja Vu.

**_ Five Hundred Years Ago _ **

“Long live the king,” Ushi muttered boredly. “They always say that, but they never last...”

Eta looked around curiously. They had returned to what could no longer be recognized as their homeland after hearing rumours of a man who claimed to have something that he called “The Philosopher’s Stone”, a blood-red stone which supposedly created gold and produced the elixir of immortality. It had transpired to be a mere charlatan in possession of a rather inferior ruby, but the rumour had been so hopeful that Eta couldn’t blame Ushi for killing the man.

“It’s so strange to be here… so much has changed,” Eta mused. On returning to the land now styling itself “England”, it was their first time speaking their native language for some centuries, although the language had changed so much in those few centuries, never mind the millennia, that Eta doubted that they would ever be able to truly speak their original tongue to anybody but each other ever again. The thought saddened her, as though they were only posing as people of their own land, as if their homeland was long gone—an island washed away irreversibly by the passage of time, leaving them adrift in a flow that could not affect them.

The flow of change was flowing all the faster all the time, no doubt about it. She remembered the venerated wise woman of five centuries ago. Barely two centuries ago, across the ocean, had the practice begun of tormenting men and women alike for engaging in very similar practices of medicine and visions. Eta herself had  been burnt twice already as a witch and expected more in the future, without much joy—she still _felt_ pain, and healing from burning hurt enough to make her want to die. Plus, the second time, she had awoken to find that Ushi had butchered the entire small farming town in retribution for the offence. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. Being burnt hurt, yes, but she didn’t feel that it justified mass-murder; if it had, she would have done it herself. They were just stupid, scared people, turning to their religion’s dictates on what they did not understand, and unfortunately their religion, as religions often seemed to these millennia, dictated the utter destruction of what they did not understand.

 Eta wasn’t really fond of mass, organised religion, as one who viewed it as a recent thing that had caused nothing but death and destruction, but then so had the star, which Eta had taken to calling “Pandora”, remembering the old Greek woman’s words. She wasn’t sure how her views on religion as a brain disease reflected on her continuing belief that her elders were still watching over her from the stars, but since the elders of her tribe, to the best of her perfect recall, had never advocated death for anything other than bears, deer and fish, she figured that it wasn’t the same thing. Simplistic, perhaps, but nine and a half millenia’s worth of knowledge and experience required some compression.

Ushi’s feelings on religion were different. He had once talked about the subject to Eta, pronouncing it a fantastic way of breeding loyal subjects, from childhood indoctrination to the dictating and controlling of all adulthood thoughts through combinations of fear (he had worked for the Inquisition in Spain for a couple of decades a while back, particularly taken with their inventive interrogation methods and the kind of results that could be procured by them) and temptation, something which he had been watching the development of with some fascination for several centuries.

“Look at the massive reach and scope of some of these things,” he’d remarked. “Christianity’s even heading across the ocean, and Islam and Judaism are all over the place as well; you can’t move for Buddhists and Shinto practitioners in the east. You know with that much scope and influence, if only I had become the head of one of these things back when they started, I would just need to order a hunt for the star and I’d have people worldwide searching for it. We’d find it in no time. Maybe that’s how we’ll find it, eh? I’ll just create a religion, we just need to give it a few centuries to mature, and then we’ll have it.”

Of course, starting a religion was precisely what he seemed to have done, Eta mused. With the growth of civilisation had come the growth of crime, and no matter what country they went to Ushi had no trouble homing in on and insinuating himself into the upper echelons of the local crime outfits, whether it was at the head of some thugs breaking into houses or an elaborate and government-sanctioned outfit like the Inquisition. If anyone was going to find the Pandora, Eta couldn’t help but put her money on some sticky-fingered rats with a nose for nice things over a herd of fearful sheep any day. The criminals, for their part, quickly worked out which side their bread was buttered, particularly when the other side was stained with the blood of their former boss.

Eta quietly went along with Ushi’s decisions; after all, he was her husband, and he was trying to get the star. She was long desensitised to blood and death, and had long given up caring that those were the methods that Ushi was most inclined to use; or at least, she was well-practiced at putting it out of her mind. What she was not desensitised to—what seemed to only grow stronger over the centuries—was the children. Whenever she slept, she either had the strange dream with the falling coin and the angel, or she dreamed of her children… and whenever it was the latter, she always spent days thereafter looking for her children in any child that she passed in the road, couldn’t resist dropping some of the more valuable coins to any begging urchin that they passed. In her darkest hours, she would see all those who had died at hers or Ushi’s hands, see them as children, and—but she always forced those thoughts down; that way madness lay, and with her immortality there was no escape from such feelings.

Through these rings, Ushi had organized everything from coups to quiet assassinations, sometimes to ease the looting of some prospective hiding-place, and sometimes simply because he could see the means and opportunity. Because he could. Because it gave him power. He already looked down on the rest of humanity—if indeed he and Eta could be considered a part of it for any longer—for their lesser strength, experience and lifespan, so what better for a godly figure like himself than to bring death as he pleased, to control the fates of nations at will?

Well, his power was not quite that extensive, and fluctuated depending on where he was and how high into their local crime webs he had insinuated himself, but he waited and planned and dreamed. He dreamed of a future where he brought death to the world at will.

Eta would nod and smile and agree when he told her of these plans, but in the end, still she dreamed of life.

_And on the other side of the planet, a desperate shogun oversaw the burying of his riches far below the earth, before the approaching forces of the enemy army could loot them. A fortune in art, fine cloth and jewels was buried, among them a large, clear stone, not to see the light of the sun or the moon for five hundred years._


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter and every chapter thereafter was released alongside Chapter 78: Pandora

**_ Two Hundred Years Ago _ **

“To President Madison of the 21 states,” Ushi said, toasting his whiskey glass.

“Who still wields less power than you,” Eta joked. “Why, someday you may even dare to assassinate people in his position.”

“Working on it,” Ushi commented, turning to the rest of the world news. “Well, look at this. Napoleon’s certainly wasting no time. The French have clearly been having far more fun since the revolution.”

“Which _was_ quite fun itself,” Eta laughed, remembering with relish the first act of the revolution, the storming of the Bastille. The energy of it—of a long-oppressed people finally finding themselves in power by the wonderfully anarchic means of mob rule and violence—had been intoxicating, and the entire country had grown drunk on it. “Aside from the guillotining, although you have to hand it to them, it really was painless. I’m sure the good doctor thought proudly of it in his last few seconds of consciousness.” Eta, having been guillotined herself five times, felt quite capable of answering the most popular question about guillotines; does the head maintain consciousness after death? She would say it did—she could even remember the sickly smell of the basket—though she wasn’t entirely certain whether that was down to her own special capabilities or not.

“I’ll agree it’s one of the more painless methods of death that I’ve experienced,” Ushi allowed. “However, experiencing death at all is not exactly a hobby of mine.” A young servant slipped in through the screen door, whispering in Ushi’s ear and passing him a note. Ushi read it dispassionately, then scribbled something on it and handed it back.

“Aren’t we a man of the world,” Eta said with a smile.

“A man who owns the world, certainly,” Ushi chuckled, “or at least its shadows. Look at this, Eta. This came from the other side of the continent. Campillo’s telegraphy designs may never have made it commercially, although I hear someone else is working on a new version as we speak, but by snapping up the designs and refining them, we now have a private, unique method of communication.”

“You and your little helpers,” Eta said with a chuckle. “Your personal criminals, who make things happen from the shadows of the world. It’s like running a company...”

“A black organization,” Ushi said with a smirk. “A shadowy syndicate.”

“But even your shadowy friends cannot find the Pandora, eh?” Eta said, injecting sadness into her voice… _false_ sadness. She had still not told Ushi that she could not care less if they never found the Pandora, if they became normal, mortal, _human_. If they stopped spreading evil throughout the world. If they died.

Eta sometimes felt as if she were drifting apart from the world, but that was not true, she knew; it was humanity which she no longer belonged to. Over the past 9,800 years, she had come to know the world well. No matter how much it changed, she and Ushi had traversed its surface hundreds—no, thousands of times. She must have walked every inch of earth in the world, breathed the air of every land, drunk every drop of water circulating throughout the world. Even as nature slowly and insistently gave way to humanity, she could still feel as it changed. She could feel as the balance of the world changed. The balance between land and water, air and earth, life and death, good and evil.

She could feel evil spreading out into the world, destroying the balance of justice.

Those who say just one person can’t change the world never met someone like Ushi.

As communications and international relations grew all the time, Ushi had taken advantage of this to connect his criminal contacts around the world, forming a vast spider’s web of crime and evil. She wouldn’t say that the very existence of crime was down to Ushi, but he had organized it, streamlined it, nurtured it, expanded it. Crime didn’t exist because of Ushi, but it wouldn’t have the scope and influence that it did without him.

The spider in the shadows, tugging at the strings of its web, a thin, almost invisible web that spread throughout the world, encompassing and controlling it.

The balance of the world was tipping towards injustice. But there was a reason they called Nature a mother. Not just that one. It was because she was always in control. She would right the balance. Eta could feel it coming—those who would right the balance, and draw the light together until it destroyed the darkness.

People are candles. So many languished in darkness, unlit because what is on candle against the dark?

It is light. It is enough to hold back the darkness. And hundreds of candles, burning with the power of a supernova, chasing the shadows out of even the darkest corners of the world...

All it took was someone to light them.

 _Eta floated in the void. She didn’t know quite where she was, floating around a small red sun. There were shadows around her, but every so often they would flit off—or be_ pulled _off—into the shadows beyond the little orb of light around the sun. But nothing pulled Eta, and it was warm and comfortable near the sun, so she couldn’t be bothered leaving._

 _After a time, though, she was alone, and it grew a little_ too _warm. She shifted backwards, away from the heat, but it only grew hotter, brighter, burning and blinding her. Suddenly, the darkness was cool and inviting, but when she tried to reach it, she was blocked by a crystal cage. Eta floated all over, battering at the cage with her fists, but it was all around, unbreakable, keeping her near the sun. Then she looked up._

_Far above, slowly falling down, was a silver coin. It turned over and over as it fell, heads on both sides. As it fell, it span faster and faster, until the heads merged into one, and it just kept turning faster, warping and changing as it fell. The faces faded as the coin warped into the shape of a bullet, shooting towards the cage._

_It crashed through the crystal cage, curiously soundless—not so much as a tinkle as it silently smashed the cage apart. It fell past the sun and warped back into a coin, shining bright, illuminating the darkness. She pushed the burning red sun away, willing it to be consumed by darkness, feeling herself being consumed by the coolness. But the coin would be consumed too! Darkness was pressing in around the light..._

_Then there was another light._

_A figure flew past, formed of whiteness, of light, like an angel. She reached out, taking the shining coin in her hands, and held it close, smiling so beautifully. She and the coin shone, and lights shone everywhere, little lights, lonely lights, but as they pulled together, orbiting around the angel and the coin, their lights were enough to obliterate the darkness entirely, and ravens screamed and cawed as they died..._

The dream had warped and changed over the millennia as new images came to fit it—the coin had once become an arrowhead, before becoming a bullet, the coin itself ever changing in size and shape—but the essence was the same. And the faces.

The face on both sides of the coin, the face of the angel... those were her children. The ones that drew the candles together and ignited them, the ones who destroyed the crystal cage and rent the darkness...

Her beautiful daughter with her chestnut hair and sky-blue eyes, her brave son with his dark hair and eyes like the bluest depths of the sea...

“ _I will find you, I swear,_ ” she promised. “ _And I will protect you. I swear it._ ”


	10. Chapter 10

**_ Fifty Years Ago _ **

“Are you sure about this, Ushi?” Eta asked softly.

“We will never find that jewel like this,” Ushi replied. “We might at least replicate its properties as a failsafe.” He fell silent as the professor entered the private room with them.

“You are—Red Rum?” he asked. “Your associate here—Vermouth—” he indicated Eta—“gave me a very interesting proposition.”

“We have scoured the earth for scientists of your skills, Miyano-sensei,” Ushi said. “We are hoping that, in exchange for our providing all the facilities and funding you will ever need, you will be cooperative in our project?”

“For the kind of funding you’re offering, I’d be happy to try to find a way to pull the gods themselves from the sky and put them into an ether bottle,” Miyano laughed. “I’ll happily try my hand at the elixir of youth... who knows, anything’s possible if you throw enough money behind it!”

“And we have a lot to throw,” Ushi said with a thin smile. “Very well. We will provide you with a laboratory, supplies, an adjacent apartment for you and your family... you have a young son, I believe?”

“Atsushi,” the man confirmed. “Very bright boy.”

“We will also provide for his schooling,” Eta promised. “The brightest ought to have their brilliance supported, after all.”

“And all we ask in return,” Ushi said, “is that we are periodically updated on your progress, and also that you understand this; if you work for us, you work for us _forever_. You understand? You belong to us. You belong to us, your wife belongs to us, your son belongs to us. Your project is of such importance to us that you cannot leave it for anything other than the Next World, understand?”

“I understand,” Miyano said, nodding gravely.

“Another associate of ours will take you to pick up your family and move you to your new lodgings,” Ushi said. He dialled the phone. “Applejack? Take Miyano-sensei to that new apartment next to the lab. We now have a head researcher for Project Pandora. Pick up his family first, he’ll tell you where to go.” He put the phone down again. A few minutes later, a young man entered the room. At first glance, he was obviously foreign, his short blond hair and emerald eyes noticeably not Asian. However, far more noticeable were the vivid scars across his cheeks. He looked visibly annoyed to be playing chauffer, but obediently led Miyano away.

Eta watched the young man go. Kurosawa James—codenamed Applejack, because one shot from him and you were dead—had been quite a find for them. He had been tormented by his peers in America throughout the war due to his father being Japanese, and was left bitter for it… deeply bitter, and a terrific fighter. In no time at all, with a little tuition, he had become an unparalleled assassin. He was not, perhaps, as deeply loyal as he could be. Some of those whom they employed were slavishly loyal to the Syndicate and their aims. James’ loyalty was based solely on the fact that Eta had promised that the Syndicate had ever-growing shadow control over the governments of the world, a control that may allow them to prevent future wars, and the bigotry and racism that resulted. James believed that the only good reasons to kill were self-defence and cash, and only personally, not on a global scale; wars, the results of fear and pride, and the resulting suffering, were something that he simply could not stand.

His partner, an odd girl named Hanako—codenamed Cider—thought similarly; she was deeply loyal to Eta for rescuing her from street poverty during the bombing. She despised disorder and chaos; for the sake of the Syndicate’s control, she was happy to kill anyone, and she was good at it too. She always knew where targets would be, what made them weakest; she claimed to be something of a psychic, and this was probably true. If she weren’t so fanatically loyal, they’d have had to kill her for some of the things that she knew.

Merciless killings aside, though, she was a surprisingly sweet and gentle girl, and Eta held the closest thing to a friendship that she’d had for millennia with the girl. Especially since she knew about the dream.

She’d had it herself, but knew that it was Eta’s. Eta begged her to keep quiet about it. She’d simply zipped her lips with a wink.

“By the way, Red,” Eta said, flipping through an account book—they had taken to calling each other by codenames, in  case anyone was listening—“you should really see this... It’s very impressive.”

Oh yes; the codenames. It had started in the nineteen-twenties, in America, as a sort of joke; while people these days talked of Al Capone running the illegal liquor market during probation, they never asked themselves who owned Al, or why mere tax evasion got him sent to Alcatraz. People often wondered what had happened to his money when he died, too. Eta and Ushi, or Vermouth and Red Rum as they were known these days, didn’t wonder.

They’d chosen alcohol names just to irritate and confuse the cops, but the names had stuck, and now their most trusted associates also bore the names of alcohols. Vermouth had put a lot of thought into her name. What went into her was a secret, and while she might smell sweet she often felt bitter; as a secret joke to herself, as well, the German word from which _vermouth_ derived also meant “wormwood”—a substance which was said to destroy werewolves... like a Silver Bullet.

Ushi’s codename, Red Rum, was simply a pun. It translated badly, which thankfully led to an air of mystery rather than confusion, but those with a command of English often realized what it meant. It didn’t take them long to realize why, either.

“This is impressive, indeed,” Ushi muttered. “I’m growing fond of Japan, you know. So many brilliant minds. This young man could be very useful indeed.”

“This was of his own initiative, as well,” Eta pointed out. “And nobody has noticed that the money is missing, despite the amount that he siphoned off...”

“What’s his name again?” Ushi asked.

“He’s an accountant,” Eta said. “Masuyama Kenzo. A very bright young man indeed. Whiskey recommended him. He has a lot of potential, I’d say...”


	11. Chapter 11

**_ Fifty Years Ago _ **

“Are you sure about this, Ushi?” Eta asked softly.

“We will never find that jewel like this,” Ushi replied. “We might at least replicate its properties as a failsafe.” He fell silent as the professor entered the private room with them.

“You are—Red Rum?” he asked. “Your associate here—Vermouth—” he indicated Eta—“gave me a very interesting proposition.”

“We have scoured the earth for scientists of your skills, Miyano-sensei,” Ushi said. “We are hoping that, in exchange for our providing all the facilities and funding you will ever need, you will be cooperative in our project?”

“For the kind of funding you’re offering, I’d be happy to try to find a way to pull the gods themselves from the sky and put them into an ether bottle,” Miyano laughed. “I’ll happily try my hand at the elixir of youth... who knows, anything’s possible if you throw enough money behind it!”

“And we have a lot to throw,” Ushi said with a thin smile. “Very well. We will provide you with a laboratory, supplies, an adjacent apartment for you and your family... you have a young son, I believe?”

“Atsushi,” the man confirmed. “Very bright boy.”

“We will also provide for his schooling,” Eta promised. “The brightest ought to have their brilliance supported, after all.”

“And all we ask in return,” Ushi said, “is that we are periodically updated on your progress, and also that you understand this; if you work for us, you work for us _forever_. You understand? You belong to us. You belong to us, your wife belongs to us, your son belongs to us. Your project is of such importance to us that you cannot leave it for anything other than the Next World, understand?”

“I understand,” Miyano said, nodding gravely.

“Another associate of ours will take you to pick up your family and move you to your new lodgings,” Ushi said. He dialled the phone. “Applejack? Take Miyano-sensei to that new apartment next to the lab. We now have a head researcher for Project Pandora. Pick up his family first, he’ll tell you where to go.” He put the phone down again. A few minutes later, a young man entered the room. At first glance, he was obviously foreign, his short blond hair and emerald eyes noticeably not Asian. However, far more noticeable were the vivid scars across his cheeks. He looked visibly annoyed to be playing chauffer, but obediently led Miyano away.

Eta watched the young man go. Kurosawa James—codenamed Applejack, because one shot from him and you were dead—had been quite a find for them. He had been tormented by his peers in America throughout the war due to his father being Japanese, and was left bitter for it… deeply bitter, and a terrific fighter. In no time at all, with a little tuition, he had become an unparalleled assassin. He was not, perhaps, as deeply loyal as he could be. Some of those whom they employed were slavishly loyal to the Syndicate and their aims. James’ loyalty was based solely on the fact that Eta had promised that the Syndicate had ever-growing shadow control over the governments of the world, a control that may allow them to prevent future wars, and the bigotry and racism that resulted. James believed that the only good reasons to kill were self-defence and cash, and only personally, not on a global scale; wars, the results of fear and pride, and the resulting suffering, were something that he simply could not stand.

His partner, an odd girl named Hanako—codenamed Cider—thought similarly; she was deeply loyal to Eta for rescuing her from street poverty during the bombing. She despised disorder and chaos; for the sake of the Syndicate’s control, she was happy to kill anyone, and she was good at it too. She always knew where targets would be, what made them weakest; she claimed to be something of a psychic, and this was probably true. If she weren’t so fanatically loyal, they’d have had to kill her for some of the things that she knew.

Merciless killings aside, though, she was a surprisingly sweet and gentle girl, and Eta held the closest thing to a friendship that she’d had for millennia with the girl. Especially since she knew about the dream.

She’d had it herself, but knew that it was Eta’s. Eta begged her to keep quiet about it. She’d simply zipped her lips with a wink.

“By the way, Red,” Eta said, flipping through an account book—they had taken to calling each other by codenames, in  case anyone was listening—“you should really see this... It’s very impressive.”

Oh yes; the codenames. It had started in the nineteen-twenties, in America, as a sort of joke; while people these days talked of Al Capone running the illegal liquor market during probation, they never asked themselves who owned Al, or why mere tax evasion got him sent to Alcatraz. People often wondered what had happened to his money when he died, too. Eta and Ushi, or Vermouth and Red Rum as they were known these days, didn’t wonder.

They’d chosen alcohol names just to irritate and confuse the cops, but the names had stuck, and now their most trusted associates also bore the names of alcohols. Vermouth had put a lot of thought into her name. What went into her was a secret, and while she might smell sweet she often felt bitter; as a secret joke to herself, as well, the German word from which _vermouth_ derived also meant “wormwood”—a substance which was said to destroy werewolves... like a Silver Bullet.

Ushi’s codename, Red Rum, was simply a pun. It translated badly, which thankfully led to an air of mystery rather than confusion, but those with a command of English often realized what it meant. It didn’t take them long to realize why, either.

“This is impressive, indeed,” Ushi muttered. “I’m growing fond of Japan, you know. So many brilliant minds. This young man could be very useful indeed.”

“This was of his own initiative, as well,” Eta pointed out. “And nobody has noticed that the money is missing, despite the amount that he siphoned off...”

“What’s his name again?” Ushi asked.

“He’s an accountant,” Eta said. “Masuyama Kenzo. A very bright young man indeed. Whiskey recommended him. He has a lot of potential, I’d say...”


	12. Chapter 12

**_ Thirty-Five years ago _ **

“Jin-chan’s napping right now,” Hanako said, sitting at her dining-room table with Eta.

“How’s your daughter doing at school?” Eta asked. “Her work hasn’t been disrupted, I hope?” Hanako shook her head, but her knuckles clenched around her cup. At fifteen, the girl had been sent on two hits already, and proven just as skilled as her parents.

“It’s strange,” Hanako sighed. “I’ve never found death distasteful. I can’t count how many I’ve killed, nor James... She’s no younger than I was when I first killed, what she does is no different from what I do, but... how can I say it? I decided to do what I do so that she _wouldn’t_ have to do what I do. Neither Aka-chan nor Jin-chan... I’ve made my peace with what I do. I didn’t want them to have to, that’s all.”

“I know,” Eta said softly.

“Yes... you do, don’t you?” Hanako said. She alone knew about Eta’s dream... and her children. Her alone... until recently.

Hanako had had Eta’s dream again, and relayed it to James. She could trust her husband to keep quiet, right?

But then he’d mentioned it to Ushi, probably believing that he, being Eta’s boss—Eta and Ushi had not put it forward that they were husband and wife; it would give Ushi, the boss, a vulnerability, and Eta, who preferred to roam, a lot less mobility as an agent—would know. He hadn’t. James had realized what he’d done and passed it off as one of Hanako’s prophetic dreams, and hadn’t even told Ushi the full content of the dream, but the damage was done; Ushi knew a child was a danger to the Syndicate, the Silver Bullet. Someday, the boy would come to destroy them. Hanako hadn’t given Ushi the boy’s face, said only that he was Japanese. But Ushi could see it in her mind, her son’s face, and her daughter’s; Ushi wanted them dead, though he thought only one of them existed, and had no way to find them, thank Kami.

“I’m sorry about that,” Hanako said softly. “I know how much I want to protect _my_ children. Besides... Don’t you realize what it means? It’s a prophecy. It’s a really powerful one. Nothing can stop this one. If you try to resist, it’ll find a way... and you will pay the price.”

“I’ve known that for a long time, Hanako-chan,” Eta replied, looking her friend in the eye. “That’s why I figure; why not just help it happen?”

“I knew you’d say that!” Hanako said, lighting up. “What can I do to help?”

“I’m going to tell you a story, Hanako-chan,” Eta said quietly. “The true story of my past and the Organization... and about the Pandora. We must find it like we must find them, Hanako-chan... and we must help them destroy it.”

**__ **

**_ Thirty-One Years Ago _ **

Eta set the phone down on the table, her face crumbling slowly, thankful that Ushi, on the other end, could not see.

Kurosawa James and his wife Kurosawa Hanako had just been executed for rebellion against the Organization. And if the way Ushi had talked was any indication, they had gone to their graves in silence about the Pandora... and Eta.

Kami, it had been so long since she had cried. It had been so long since she had cared enough about someone to shed tears for their death.

It hurt so much.

Rebellion. That’s what what she was doing was called. Ushi couldn’t kill her for it, couldn’t lock her in a room and gas her like he had Hanako and James, but he would find some way to make her pay. It would be the ultimate betrayal.

But he had already betrayed her. He wanted her children dead.

She was alone again, but she would not let him win. She could not...

**__ **

**_ Thirty Years Ago _ **

It was all gone. Eta stared on as the building burned. Hanako’s daughter had been locked up in the infirmary there. First she’d been locked up alone, after her rebellion—just like her parents—but then the girl had found some way to slit her wrists.

She couldn’t just leave. She’d been the Syndicate’s since she was born. There was no escape from that. She wasn’t going to be executed. She’d already shown that she wanted death.

Ushi was too cruel to give it to her.

Then, in the night... first there’d been complaints as they cameras in the infirmary fizzled out. Then the whole building had exploded into fire.

Only one body was never found.

 _Jin-chan may be the Syndicate’s now,_ Eta thought, remembering the little boy with the cold green eyes, so dispassionate over his parent’s deaths... _But somehow Aka-chan is free... and she knows how to destroy it._

She strolled away, fighting to keep her face dispassionate. Children...

In the Syndicate’s rise to power, there had been children born to parents with the Syndicate, like Hanako’s children. Those children were born and raised knowing nothing but darkness. Born and raised to kill. Like Miyano Atsushi’s children would be. Upon his father’s death, the boy—a man now—had taken over his father’s research, and now he was getting married, to a western girl named Elena, also a brilliant scientist. No doubt their children too would be brilliant; genetic engineering at its finest, a lineage of super-scientists for the sole purpose of recreating the elixir of immortality.

Eta couldn’t help despising him for the research that he worked on. She did not want the elixir to ever be completed. She did not want forever.

Ten thousand years had been more than enough.

She sighed heavily. She needed to take a break from the Syndicate for a while. She had fought for nearly ten thousand years, and she was so very tired...


	13. Chapter 13

**_ Twenty-Three Years Ago _ **

“Are you here to audition, Ojousama?”

Eta nodded distractedly. She had decided to try college for a few years. She had probably taken too easy a subject, though; she was forever searching for fresh distraction. In the end, she had come for drama because it looked interesting. She glanced up at the speaker, figuring that even here she would not find what she was looking for.

A young man was watching her with concerned eyes. Twinkling, blue, concerned eyes. _A blue she had seen before._

“You don’t look in a good mood,” he commented, popping out a rose and handing it to her. She couldn’t help laughing.

“Forgive my presumption, but you looked like you could use some cheering up,” he added. “Kuroba Toichi. Chemistry Junior. Wannabe magician. Leading male in the drama club. ”

“And leading lady sometimes,” one of the girls called.

“The show must go on,” Toichi called back in the girl’s voice, to mass amusement.

“Sharon Vineyard, World History Sophomore,” she said, shaking his hand. Eta watched him out of the corner of her eyes. He looked almost exactly like her son, in her dreams... _almost_...

_Not yet..._

“How did you do that?” she asked curiously. “I mean, do that girl’s voice?”

“It’s a little trick of mine,” he said with a shrug. “It takes a lot of practice, but imitating voices is easy once you get the hang of it...”

“It seemed like magic,” she laughed.

“It’s supposed to,” he said with a cheeky grin. “I’m a magician, after all.”

“You dream, Kuroba, you dream...” one of the other students laughed.

“But if you want to learn, come along anyway,” Toichi continued. “Most days, from about five to six, I’ve been giving tuition to a young actress... Fujimine Yukiko. Her agent’s an old friend of mine, so he asked for my help... I’ve been teaching her voice techniques, role play and disguise.”

“Disguise?” Eta asked, glancing at the makeup stand where a girl was trying out different blushers to try to make herself look like a zombie. “Like makeup?”

Toichi flashed that cheeky grin again. “Trust me, you won’t have seen makeup quite like mine...”

**__ **

**_ Twenty-Two Years Ago _ **

“I didn’t know you drew, Sharon-chan,” Toichi said, glancing at the sketchpad. Eta jumped, having not heard his approach.

“I’m a woman of many talents,” she said with a wink, pulling the Poker Face that he’d taught her into play. “This is one I prefer to keep to myself...”

“That’s a cute picture, though,” Toichi said thoughtfully. “The children playing in a field...”

“It’s after a story I heard, a long time ago,” Eta hedged, twirling her pen in her fingers, “about two very special children...”

“What’s so special about them?” Toichi said, quirking a little smile.

“They’re special to the whole world,” she said with a soft little smile of her own, “they’re the Hope from Pandora’s Box...” _My children..._

“Sorry I’m late!” Yukiko trilled as she bounced into the clubroom. “Sensei kept me behind because I got a red mark... Really though, It’s not my fault that we lost a major scene when the tape got overexposed... re-filming went on so long that I never had time to finish my physics homework, but really, is that _my_ fault?”

Eta laughed, quickly tucking away her sketchbook. She hadn’t meant for anyone to see the sketch. Toichi didn’t say anything, but just smiled too as he started pulling wig materials out of his bag. Fujimine Yukiko, on top of her dramatic talents, really did have a talent for lightening the mood, as if her bubbly personality was too much for one girl and so was projected onto everyone else in the immediate vicinity. She even always managed to make Eta smile. _First Hanako, and now Yukiko... it seems that the closer I grow to human, the easier it is for me to love people..._

She’d learned a lot from these two people; not least that she still _had_ the capacity to care, but a lot of useful skills as well. While Yukiko had never managed to change her voice hugely beyond changing her dialect and accent—though she did that so skilfully that it was hard to tell that she was hardly changing her voice—Eta was getting better every day. Toichi’s disguise techniques really were incredible. Combining the disguises and voice changing techniques, Eta had managed to prank Yukiko once by strolling in disguised as Toichi. She fell for it until the real Toichi had walked in, who had then laughed so hard that he’d had to lean against the wall.

Most useful of all was the Poker Face.

Toichi had first told them about his Poker Face when they’d been getting ready to head for home, and he’d asked if they could tell that he had had the mother of all hangovers all day. Apparently he’d been drinking with a good friend from the nearby Police Academy the night before, who, for a police officer in training, could really hold his drink. Yukiko and Eta hadn’t noticed a thing. Most of all, Eta wanted to learn that skill; that perfect, unwavering Poker Face. As the game neared its end, the stakes were going to be high, and Eta would need every skill of deception and stealth she could muster to find and protect her most precious children...


	14. Chapter 14

**_ Twenty years ago _ **

Eta quietly ran along the corridor of the Parisian restaurant and showhall. Her flight from America had been late. She’d spent most of the flight thinking about the little girl, who must have burned with her parents. Eta felt remorse for the child, but better for her to die with her parents than live alone, an orphan.

There was no escaping that her parents had had to die. Eta was too close now to be arrested. Besides, if people knew that immortality existed, the fools would want it—and Eta could not allow anyone else to undergo this curse.

She silently opened the door at the back of the room, catching sight of the magician onstage.

“And now, ladies and gentlemen, if I may, I would like to render _you_ a little assistance...”

Eta slipped into one of the tables at the back.

“You’re late,” Ushi muttered in Japanese.

“Sorry,” she whispered in reply. “The lines at the Louvre were long... there’s a lot of new security after that mess last night.”

“Has anyone lost any small personal possession today?” the man on the stage called. His French was impeccable, if flatly accented. “A wallet, perhaps? Some makeup? A piece of jewellery?”

“Monsieur,” a lady sitting at one of the front tables called.

“Oui, mademoiselle?” the magician replied smoothly. The lady, on the bad side of middle-aged, giggled. “Have you lost something precious?”

“It was my necklace,” she said. “I was wearing it this morning, I am sure, but when we sat down it had gone! I am not sure when I lost it, but the waiters here cannot find it so I am sure it must have been earlier.”

“Well, mademoiselle,” he said, “if you could perhaps describe this beautiful necklace to me, perhaps I can summon it back to its proper place...”

“It has a fine gold chain,” the woman said, “and a small blue stone set into a gold backing. Monsieur, will you _really_ summon it?”

“But of course!” he replied. “Now, visualize your necklace, if you will, mademoiselle... if you good ladies and gentlemen are willing to assist, if you, too, can visualize her necklace, and I will summon it to travel through time and space...”

Everyone watched the magician as he closed his eyes, holding out one hand and raising the other with his fingers pressed together. Every eye was glued to him. Perhaps only Ushi and Eta, well versed in such things, noticed a shift in the shadows offstage.

The magician snapped his fingers. The stage lights flicked, for less than a second, but when they returned the man had not moved, and his outstretched hand now held a fine golden chain, the blue stone on the end swaying slightly. Everyone gasped and cheered, the lady thanking him profusely as he refastened the necklace around her neck.

“Oh, _very_ interesting,” Ushi said. “He’s just an acting tutor, you said?”

“He was a member of a drama club at the local college,” Eta replied. “But he was just doing small shows for fun before. Paying tuition for a chemistry major, you know how much that costs... He graduated and scraped together enough money to try going professional only recently, but clearly it’s working out for him. He’s certainly rising fast.”

“Indeed,” Ushi replied. “Are you certain he was the one last night?”

“Oh, I’m quite certain,” she said as the man onstage bowed to the cheering crowd.

“Before I pull my final trick,” he said, “I should like to give kudos to the thief who broke into the Louvre last night. He certainly had style, and I’m sure he’s the reason that you’re all suddenly so interested in magic.” Everybody laughed, in some cases rather guiltily. “I do hope that he returns the painting soon, however. I was rather wanting to go see the exhibit, but there’s really no point without the _Mona Lisa_ herself, is there? Ladies and gentlemen, you’ve been wonderful—merci beaucoup! Bon nuit!” He clicked his fingers and the lights flashed out, blinding everyone momentarily. By the time the blotches had faded from everyone’s eyes, the magician was gone. Eta pulled Ushi’s hand and led him quietly out, along the backstage corridors.

“Toichi-sensei!” she called as they ran into the man of the evening trying to sneak out the back with his friend, an older man, a teacher in the science department at the college that Toichi had attended who had gladly dropped the books for a chance to travel with his star pupil. “I see you finally went professional! Congratulations! Oh, and Konosuke-sensei as well!” She motioned to Ushi, who slipped back into the shadows before either Toichi or Jii spotted him.

“Sharon-chan!” Toichi said cheerily, greeting her with a kiss on both cheeks, a continental habit that he had picked up quite happily. “Well, did you enjoy the show?”

“Oh, _very_ much,” she said with a smile. “So much so that I don’t really mind losing the bet...”

“Ah, I should not have made such an easy bet!” the young man said with a cheeky grin. “I would only feel bad now about taking your money.”

“A bet is a bet, and I promised to pay,” Eta said with a beautiful smile, opening her purse and counting out some rather large bills. “Besides, the cheque on my first contract just paid up. This is chump change to me now.”

“And here I was feeling so proud of my own new career,” Toichi said, shaking his head in mock sadness but still grinning like the fool that most people thought he was—until he’d taken all of their money within three hands of poker.

“Well, you’ll have more soon, won’t you?” Eta said. “That painting will surely fetch millions.”

“What?” Toichi said, looking suddenly shocked—and a genuinely shocked Kuroba Toichi was a rare thing indeed. “Oh, no, no, no. I can’t possibly _sell_ the painting! I only stole it to prove my admittedly alcohol-fuelled rant that the security at the Louvre was so bad that any mere charlatan could take what he wished. I’m sure I sounded like Ginzo-kun… my friend is with me in spirit. Or spirits. No, I must return the painting. I cannot _possibly_ keep it. I would feel like a criminal!”

“And breaking into an art gallery and taking public property would make you...?” Eta said, inwardly suddenly very worried. Her little venture seemed set to backfire. _I had hoped... if I could keep him close to me... if it is him..._

“I dislike the phrase ‘breaking in’,” Toichi corrected her. “ _I_ broke nothing. You cannot blame me for the carelessness of the _gendarme_. And as I said, I do intend to return the painting, so I am merely a borrower, if you will… just putting on a show, no harm done. It was fun, but not something I could possibly intend to make _money_ from. Kami, no—that is simply dishonest!”

“Dishonest like stealing a woman’s necklace and then pretending to summon it back for her?” Eta said, quirking a delicate eyebrow.

“I returned it, did I not?” Toichi said, spreading his hands with a look of utter innocence. Then he narrowed his eyebrows. “No, I have no intention of becoming a criminal—and if I didn’t know better, Sharon-chan, I’d say you were encouraging me to be one.”

“I think you have potential as one,” Eta sighed, “but I suppose an innate and unfortunate tendency to honesty cannot be cured. Forgive me for trespassing upon your time.” She turned and stalked away, inwardly fuming.

 _Dammit! But he’s so good! Someone like him could certainly acquire the Pandora... and if he were working for me, if I had it in my hands before Ushi..._ Then she smiled. _Then again, it isn’t necessary that_ I _get the jewel, is it? Only that Ushi_ doesn’t _..._

 _“_ It’s no good,” she said to Ushi, quietly but just loud enough that, if Toichi was still in earshot—and he had exceptionally sharp ears—he might just be able to hear her... “He won’t steal the jewel for us. He has talent, but he’d never be loyal to murderers.”

“It seems your little venture has backfired,” Ushi said. “Now it will only be harder for those who _are_ loyal to get into the Louvre.”

“On to Prague, then,” she said just before they walked out of even Toichi’s long earshot.

The next day, the _Mona Lisa_ inexplicably reappeared with a note of apology for “borrowing” it. And the day after that, Kuroba Toichi, a rising star of the magical stage, continued his tour of Europe with a trip to Prague. A consummate art lover, he visited many art galleries and museums, one of which also seemed to have a sudden increase in ostensibly perfectly normal tourists. One night, a flashy thief once again stole something, this time a statuette from the museum that had so taken so many people’s interest. It was returned two days later, again with a note of apology, and security was so beefed up that the next night a man was caught cutting the glass in one of the ground-floor windows, though he escaped before he was arrested. But people were most taken with the flashy thief. Interpol decided to send out a unit to investigate this showy thief who had now hit two countries and escaped without a trace, among them a young but keen officer by the name of Nakamori Ginzo. Ginzo was the one who suggested entering him on the Interpol List, and so he was, at number 1412.

And Eta watched his career. Though they rarely met again, and always formally—as Sharon Vineyard and Kuroba Toichi, nothing more—she watched him. She watched as he and Yukiko found love, and got married, and had children, babies born within two months of each other.

Baby boys with deep blue eyes.

They only spoke once more, and then it was only Eta who said anything.

“I would beware, Toichi-sensei. You are against those who flew from Pandora’s Box, whose only aim is to destroy the hope left behind...”


	15. Chapter 15

**_ Ten Years Ago _ **

_I never meant it to lead to this. I’m sorry._

Eta, disguised, veiled, hidden at the back of the crowd of black-clad mourners, wanted to scream it from the rooftops. But what use would it be?

It hurt. Kami, but it hurt.

And once again, in was all her fault.

 _He’s certainly come along since Paris._ She’d just made that comment, offhand, without thinking about it, without remembering that she had gone to some lengths to convince Ushi that the Kaitou Kid had simply picked up Kuroba Toichi’s ball from the Louvre heist and gotten running with it. She had forgotten that she had so convinced Snakebite that the Kid’s identity was unknown that he had even tried to convince the Kid to work for them, telling him the story of the Pandora in the process. She had tried to protect him, tried to protect little Kaito, but in the end one slip of the tongue had ended it.

Snakebite had joined the dots and found himself a target.

Eta hadn’t seen the show. She’d only heard about it on the news, and then from Ushi. Kuroba Toichi was dead. The Kaitou Kid was dead.

Two days ago, two days after his death, there had been a heist planned. Crowds had formed. The police had swarmed in. Nakamori Ginzo had been prepared.

But there was only silence.

Eta kept her distance from Chikage, his widow, shoulders heaving as she swallowed sobs, clutching Kaito’s hand as if she feared the boy may also slip away from her. The child himself wasn’t crying. He only stared at his father’s coffin with cold, dead eyes.

That hurt, just as much as her friend’s death. She didn’t want to see such pain in that child’s eyes. Of all the children in the world, she didn’t want to see pain in that boy’s eyes.

Not far away, one child was crying, a little girl clutching the hand of Nakamori Ginzo. Eta’s gaze roamed over her, then returned, a classic double-take. Her own long-practiced Poker Face crumbled as she recognized that girl’s face.

_Angel. She’s an Angel._

_Kaito has an Angel?_ Eta realized, seeing the face of her daughter from her dreams. _So_ he _... is the one...?_

She’d seen the uncanny similarities between Yukiko’s son and Toichi’s. They could have been twins; the same little face, the face she’d seen in her dreams for ten thousand years. And she’d seen quite a bit of Yukiko since college, the bubbly woman blissfully ignorant of what Eta really was—though she was far from smiling, not today, not now.

She’d seen little Shinichi several times, too, and had often wondered; which boy was the true Silver Bullet, and which an unfortunate doppelganger?

But Kaito had his Angel. So it was him, right?

 _But..._ she thought. _But they both..._ They felt the same to her; their identical faces sparked the same need in her, the desperate desire to protect them, see them grow, see them shine.

She couldn’t let the Syndicate hurt them. Not any of them.

 _I will protect you all,_ she swore. _Until the time comes when I know... I know who I have to protect..._


	16. Chapter 16

**_ Three Years Ago _ **

“ ** _Attention. Silver car speeding on the bridge. Heading towards—holy crap, what the_ hell _are they_ doing _?!_ ”**

 _Sounds like Yuki-chan,_ Eta thought, quirking a little smile as she turned off her police scanner. Well, she could hardly let her old friend get arrested, could she?

After a moment’s thought, knowing that the way Kudo Yukiko drove she’d get here any minute, she stepped into the nearest clothes shop and bought a man’s coat. Then, after slipping in and out of the shop’s bathroom to apply makeup, she addressed the crowds outside the theatre.

“ **Ladies and Gentlemen, can I ask you to step back, please? Now, does anybody here have an objection to being filmed?** ”

A few minutes later, the silver Jaguar E-type screeched to a halt in front of the theatre. An officer instantly approached. Eta, winking at the crowd, strolled over to the officer. Yukiko thanked her profusely as she shooed the officer away.

“Why don’t you...” Eta said, reaching up behind her mask and changing her voice as she spoke, “just thank me?” She tore the mask away with a flourish, unable to resist being a little overdramatic, enjoying the look of shock on Yukiko’s face and...

_Shinichi. Kudo Shinichi was in the car with her. She hadn’t seen the boy in years, and oh how he’d grown, into the brave young man she saw on the coin..._

“Me, Sharon Vineyard,” she concluded, putting her glasses back on. She didn’t need them; they were just glass. But she had put a lot of work into appearing to age, and the oversized, face-concealing glasses went a long way for her.

She explained what she’d done to Yukiko, using the speech as a distraction to herself as she tried to avoid staring at Shinichi. She hadn’t really expected to see him here, in LA. She was hijacking some crazy serial killer’s killing spree to get rid of a few inconvenient witnesses, too. She prayed he wouldn’t take his father’s interest in crime...

“Hey, Kaa-san...” he asked shakily. Eta felt a slight pang as she reminded herself that he was talking to Yukiko.

“ _Momma!_ ”

“This woman... what is she?”

“Eh?! Shinichi, you don’t remember America’s most famous actress?”

Eta felt another crack behind her Poker Face, though she kept it still, as a girl stuck her head out of the back seat and started bickering with Shinichi.

_An Angel. Her face is the Angel._

_Shinichi has an Angel too?!_ she thought, keeping her face expressionless as Yukiko explained about how they’d learned disguise to the teenagers, even though the mere allusion to Kuroba Toichi brought on another pang of regret. _They’re here... Does this mean... it’s them?_

“I’ll have to thank God!” the Angel said happily.

Eta wondered how she could smile so happily by entrusting her faith and thanks to something so filthy. She couldn’t stop her expression from darkening. As if to match her mood, the rain began to fall.

“I wonder if there really is a God…” she mused aloud, opening her umbrella. Angel looked confused. “If such an entity really existed…” Eta continued, “wouldn’t all honest, hard-working people be happy?”

_People who aren’t like me. People who are better than me. People who suffer regardless of how good or bad they are._

_Being good or bad doesn’t make a difference. If anything, the good only suffer more._

_So often because of me._

She wanted to scream this to the Angel, to help her understand…

But she couldn’t. Nobody could understand her. She didn’t want them to. She didn’t want anyone to have to understand her torment.

“Right… No Angel has ever smiled upon me,” she said aloud. “Not even once.”

Yukiko, Shinichi and the Angel all stared at her, confused, silent, the only sounds the passing traffic and the rain. Eventually, it was the Angel who innocently broke the silence, allowing her to pass off her sadness as the result of the loss of her “parents”, her “husband”, her “estranged daughter”…

Even if they were the Angel and the Silver Bullet… they couldn’t understand. And she didn’t want them to.

She never wanted them to feel that pain.

*********************************************************************************************************

_This is bad... That damn Akai’s on my tail!_

Eta panted in pain, clutching at her false stomach. The bullet had been powerful enough to reach through the padding and really hit her. It wasn’t deep, but it had bled enough to stain right through the padding, which made the wound look authentic, at least.

She climbed up into the disused building. She’d knocked out the real serial killer and locked him up here somewhere. He’d killed young girls, so he deserved what he was going to get. Besides, wasn’t it just foolish to hide in such an old building, where the ground could give way at any moment and drop him to his death?

She glanced up as something white fluttered through the window. _A handkerchief?_

She stepped backwards into the shadows as she heard footsteps down below. Someone was coming in looking for the handkerchief. Well, she could just stay hidden and...

It was Shinichi.

 _What... why?_ she thought in shock, watching him glance around suspiciously as he bent to pick up the handkerchief. _Why is he here? Did the Fates send him here... because... because he’s..._

As she stepped backwards again, praying that he’d leave without finding the killer, her foot touched the door behind her, which squealed as it moved. Shinichi whipped around and spotted her. They looked each other in the eye for a long moment, before Eta turned and fled.

 _Dammit,_ she gasped, feeling her wound burn as she ran. She shouldn’t be running with an injury like this. But she had to get away...

She tore down the stairs, rounding the turn, her footsteps ringing out on the steel steps, when she saw Ran standing on the landing below, staring up at her.

_No... her too...?_

“Run, Ran!” Shinichi screamed from the landing above. “That’s the serial killer!”

 _Dammit,_ Eta thought wildly. _I have to get her out of the way... scare her! Make her run!_ “Now you know who I am, girl...” she said in the serial killer’s voice, leaning against the guardrail for support as she reached for her silencer. “I was able to hide in here, that is, until this boy found me. Well, if you must blame someone, blame the God that set this up for you.” She started to screw the silencer on. _Run! Run away! Please!_ But the girl remained frozen. _What... do I do...?_

Eta gasped as the guardrail gave way behind her. _Crap... this is going to hurt... and by the time I heal, the cops will have found me... no..._

She reached out, desperately, as if to grab the guardrail, the silencer slipping from her grasp, then felt something jerk her sleeve. She looked up.

Ran was leaning over the edge, holding her sleeve, holding her up—s _aving her_.

_My Angel..._

“What’re you doing? Hurry, grab my arm!” Ran screamed. “Hurry, the rain is...”

Just as she started to slip, another hand reached out to grab Eta’s arm. Shinichi had joined Ran’s side. Eta could only stare at them for a moment, staring at their familiar faces. _They thought I was going to kill them... but they still... they’re still..._

Then she collected herself. Dangling like this, she could pull them over the edge with her at any moment—and they wouldn’t heal. She reached up to grab the rail, pulling herself up and leaping swiftly over their heads, faintly registering their shock as she landed lightly but unsteadily on the landing.

“Why?” she asked. “Why did you save me? Tell me why!”

To her surprise, Shinichi gave a little laugh, and said, “Is a reason necessary? I don’t know why you would kill someone, but in helping somebody...”

Eta could only stare at the boy, barely more than a child, speaking with the wisdom of ten thousand years.

“... There is no need for a logical mind, right?”

_My children... my strong, brave boy... my good, kind daughter... they really are... they’re..._

Behind Shinichi, Ran closed her eyes as she collapsed. Shinichi turned, calling her name desperately. It was all Eta could do not to scream with him. Instead, almost mechanically, she raised the gun, though she knew she could never shoot.

“Don’t bother.”

Eta blinked in surprise as Shinichi, back to her, bent to pick up Ran.

“You’re injured, which means the police are nearby,” he explained. “If you fire a gun without a silencer, they’ll find you. Just the same... I can’t do anything to capture you.” He turned to face her, his blue eyes fearless. “I’ll let you go for now. But I won’t show any mercy next time.”

 _What?!_ Eta thought. _What kind of child speaks so fearlessly to a serial killer?!_

“I’ll prove all of your crimes without any evidence necessary,” he said calmly, walking away. “I’ll make sure you’re put away.”

Eta silently watched him go, then smiled. _A child... who is so much more than a child..._ _the Silver Bullet..._

She turned and climbed back up the stairs, looking for the real serial killer.


	17. Chapter 17

**_ Two Years Ago _ **

“Gin killed who?” Eta asked, feeling her blood run cold as she clutched the phone.

 _“Kudo Shinichi. Some kid detective who stuck his nose into a blackmailing op. Gin silenced him using a failed elixir. At first we though it must have failed because his death wasn’t reported—and he’s a rather public figure so we assumed that he would have been—but then Sherry confirmed his death. Stellar absence rate from school, dusty and empty house. It seems to be the reverse of what we expected. The police covered it up. So we’ve been using that failed prototype as a poison since, I was saying, and it’s worked magnificently every time. Sherry’s not particularly happy about it, though..._ ”

“Neither she nor her sister are much happy about what they do these days,” Eta sighed, her brain unwilling to process the implications of what she’d just heard. “Traitors like their mother, I’d say...”

“ _I’m certain about Akemi, at least. Sherry’s loyalties will be tested soon. I’ve lined up a job for Akemi, and whether she succeeds or not she’s not getting out alive. Gin offered to handle that himself._ ”

“I see...” Eta forced her mind to dwell on this, needing to be alone when she comprehended that Kudo Shinichi was dead. She thought of the cold assassin who had been so interested in Project Pandora and its young research leader. Those who didn’t know Gin would find it surprising that he would do this, that he hated traitors so much.

Those who knew Gin would wonder why he hadn’t done it sooner.

He was a twisted, affectionless psychopath, there was no way around that; the Organization had seen to that. Eta wondered what he could have been, had he lived his life peacefully with his parents and sister. While she found her troublesome, she still couldn’t help slightly respecting Miyano Akemi, who had been born and raised surrounded by darkness as Gin had, but still loved her sister so much—had even, perhaps, loved that Akai Shuuichi rat, who had fooled her and wormed his way into a position of trust in the Organization. She still dreamed of light.

Like Eta did.

“My current movie will be done filming in a few months,” she commented, deciding to end the conversation, “then perhaps I’ll come back to Japan for a while.”

“ _I’m glad. I missed you._ ”

Eta couldn’t help shivering as he said that; couldn’t help the involuntary pleasure and guilt at those words.

She still loved him so much. She hated him so much. She hated herself for loving him. But she couldn’t stop it any more than she could snuff out the stars.

“I love you,” she said. “I’ll see you then.” She hung up, closed her eyes, leaned back in her chair, and sighed heavily. Then she let the tears fall.

He was dead. She had been so sure. He had solved so many murders in the past year, like their meeting had set something free within him. He brought justice. He _was_ justice. When Kaito had become the Kid a few months ago, when he had sworn as Toichi had to destroy the Pandora, Eta had wondered again which is was; neither had won at their meeting at the Haido Clock Tower, so Eta had not been able to tell which. They were too evenly matched. But still, Eta had suspected that maybe Shinichi...

But he was dead. At only sixteen, he had been taken out of the game before he’d even begun to play. Eta willed away the images of him lying in some dark alley, cold, dead. She could hear Yukiko, crying like her. Crying for her lost child.

Perhaps it was better this way. The Organization was certain that Akai Shuuichi was the Silver Bullet, and that the Kaitou Kid was Toichi, who had somehow escaped. Kaito was protected by the shadows of a dead man and a living one. With his Angel at his side, perhaps he could indeed be the Silver Bullet who could end the Organization and bring darkness.

Eta wished that the movie would end filming soon, so she could return to Japan and watch over her chosen children.

**__ **

**_ Several Months Later _ **

Eta made polite small talk with those dignitaries in attendance who spoke English, but inside she was already asleep. Over the years, she had mastered one hundred and seventy-three languages, though over a hundred were now dead or had mutated beyond recognition, and in any case she sometimes found it irritating to have to pretend not to speak them. Admittedly, there was an illicit thrill in being able to hear what those around you were saying without them knowing, and she’d been able to catch more than one translator screwing her over. Still, it was time-consuming to talk through them, and being trailed everywhere by a translator did cause problems if she had something more illegal to deal with—such as tonight.

She caught Pisco’s eye across the hall, seeing him surreptitiously watching the politician. She prayed his plan would work. It left so much to chance and things being overlooked. That may have worked on the books back in the fifties, but these days they could not afford such a risky gambit.

She trailed him as he stepped closer to the chandelier, being very careful not to step _under_ it, where the unfortunate soon-to-be-ex politician was now standing. He raised his gun and fired.

There was a _flash_. Eta quickly glanced across the hall, ignoring the slow rumble of the chain giving way. The photographer was standing on the opposite side of the hall— _facing them_.

No, she could see a man and a woman—wasn’t she a novelist?—breaking apart. The picture was of them cuddling, surely. Pisco was too far away, there were too many people in between him and the photographer... right?

All other thoughts were dropped when the chandelier did.

Eta blinked in surprise when the policemen instantly appeared by the body. They were here already? What was going on?

She heard one of them talking about a tip-off. Somebody had known? How? Gin had called and said that Sherry had reappeared and left a bug in his car. He hadn’t seen her, but the bug had caught them discussing the impending assassination, and he’d said that she was likely to be at the hotel. But would she really have called the police? She had never struck Eta as that kind of girl.

She was saved having to pay much attention in the confusion thereafter by all her questions going through her interpreter. But she hadn’t been able to find Sherry here anywhere...

Then there was a roar of noise and flashes of light as the door was opened. The reporters had already descended. Eta wondered why the doors had been opened for a moment, as nobody was going through, when she realized that she was looking a few feet too high. Two children were standing in front of the door, a boy and a girl. The girl turned, hiding her eyes from the flashes. She was wearing large glasses, but she was still recognizably...

Across the hall, Eta could see Pisco rapidly clicking away at a laptop PC. He must have seen her too. Eta didn’t need access to the file photos to know that that was Sherry, being towed away by a dark-haired little boy...

_Wait..._

After the first moment of disbelief, Eta was not surprised that Sherry had shrunk. It explained so much. In the first case, getting younger was what the drug had been intended to achieve anyway, and the only exits from the room that she had been confined in were the door and a garbage chute, which was too small for an _adult_ to get through...

If she had taken the drug and shrunk... it would have to be an anomalous effect. Everyone else had died. Everyone had been confirmed dead... except...

Eta glanced around as her interpreter asked if she could show the inspector her commemorative handkerchief. Confused, she flashed the purple material. The inspector nodded and asked her to wait behind. As her interpreter redundantly explained, they were about to let people out but they’d had a tip that someone on the list of those given purple handkerchiefs had done it. Like her and Pisco...

Someone had known that there would be a murder here, and someone had warned the police who might have done it. Sherry, she was sure, was more likely to try and slip in and out without being noticed… from the looks of it that was what she had tried to do. Someone else had called the cops—someone, in fact, who was capable of influencing the cops.

_If she had shrunk, couldn’t someone else?_

It was sheer luck that she saw him at all. She was pulled straight into questioning, along with a few others, including Pisco, who had been nearly missed as he had gone to the bathroom. Eta could only lean by the window, eavesdropping on the others’ conversations, slip Pisco her handkerchief to cover him, watch a familiar Porsche 356A pull up outside. After some time, Gin and Vodka got out, walking into the building. A while later, a tiny dark-haired figure followed them.

_Could it be?_

Even after she was released, Eta hung around the lobby. She waved off her interpreter and his offer to call a taxi, claiming that some friends were to give her a lift. Then she slipped back into the shadows, where she belonged, watching and waiting.

And so it was that she first laid eyes on Edogawa Conan, slipping past the empty desk while everyone ran to deal with a fire, carrying an injured little girl recognizable as Sherry on his back. For some reason, she was wearing only his coat. The second Eta saw him, she knew.

Kudo Shinichi was alive, and despite his handicap he was still ready and willing to give the Syndicate a kicking.


	18. Chapter 18

**_ A Year and a Half Ago _ **

_I’m taking time off from Tinseltown. I’ve got some things to clear up here..._

Things still weren’t much clearer, unfortunately.

She’d done a little digging. Kaito and “Conan” had faced off a couple of times, both times too evenly matched for Kaito to get away with anything or for Shinichi to arrest him. Conan had appeared at the same time that Shinichi had supposedly been killed, just as his classmate Haibara Ai had transferred shortly after Sherry had vanished.

Eta couldn’t let Sherry get away. There was too much she could tell the world about the Organization, and about _her_ , if only the little idiot stopped to think about it. Besides, what if she finished that drug? Eta had to get close to Sherry—and to do so while she was under the watch of a Silver Bullet.

She’d eventually decided on Dr Ariade, an amiable enough figure who was close to the family but not close enough for them to notice any slight differences as she accustomed herself to acting as him. His grandmother and housekeeper would notice differences, though, so unfortunately they would have to go, but at least their disappearance was unlikely to be noted as neither left the household much.

Then there had been the car crash, which made things easier. She pulled some strings to cover up the crash, and promptly moved into his place. She was a bit disgruntled to find that his coaching job at Teitan High—a job which kept her within reach of Mori Ran, and thus Edogawa Conan—was almost over, but then she stopped by the drama club and started working with them, which was even better because the female lead was the Angel herself. Eta only had a minor heart attack when the girl missed school and rehearsal one day with the explanation that Conan had been shot and was in hospital, but luckily it hadn’t done the boy any fatal damage and he was ready to come watch the show… where Eta would be playing the male lead, in place of the Suzuki girl who had injured herself with an overzealous sword sweep. It would be the perfect opportunity to get a little closer to the Mori household.

Though she spoke derisively of Hollywood, Eta did love acting. There was a thrill in it, in becoming someone else—for fun, rather than as a matter of vital disguise—and Toichi-sensei had taught her so well. Every time Eta donned her flawless Ariade disguise, every time she spoke in a perfect reproduction of his voice, every time she stepped onto the auditorium stage, slightly cheesy lines in hand, she remembered him: a brilliant teacher, a fondly missed friend, a good man. Perhaps Eta was growing sentimental with age, but still she regretted his death every day, like she regretted Hanako’s.

So she was very disappointed, on the day of the show, to find that she had been replaced.

“Suzuki-san, have you seen my costume?” she asked the girl in Ariade Tomoaki’s desperate voice. “It’s nearly my cue...”

“Oh, I’m so sorry, Dr Ariade!” Sonoko gasped. “I forgot to tell you... I put in, uh, a special stand-in. It’s really important that he plays the Knight in this last scene, so...”

“Really? Who?” Eta said, outward voice all innocent surprise, inwardly figuring that it was a boy who the ditzy girl had a crush on and had wanted the part.

“I can’t tell you yet,” Sonoko said with a wink. “It’s a very special surprise...”

“She won’t tell the rest of us either,” muttered one of the bandits, before he and his friends charged onstage.

“Does he know the lines?” Eta asked worriedly, glancing up into the special spot on the rafters where a dark shape was crouching.

“He did, actually,” Sonoko said, sounding surprised. “I, eh... touched up his knowledge where it was lacking, but overall he knew them perfectly... it’ll be fine, trust me!”

Eta shrugged and turned to watch the stage. Ran really was a brilliant actor, Eta thought with a hint of pride. She did look genuinely helpless amongst those bandits, and Eta had _seen_ her karate practices.

Then the Black Knight leapt from the rafters, fighting off the bandits. Eta couldn’t see his face, because the helmet obscured it, but he seemed... _familiar_.

Then, oddly, rather than saying his lines, he simply turned and hugged Ran—holding her close, despite her surprise. Sonoko just held up a sign going “Just Keep Going!”

“Suzuki-san...” Eta muttered.

“This is supposed to happen, I told him to do this!” she squealed quietly, with a disturbing grin. “Oh, watch, I hope he bought it...”

“Who is that and what did you tell him?” another girl hissed as Ran improvised to fill in the conversation that was supposed to take place between the two.

“I told him there was a ‘script change’,” Sonoko giggled, “and he’s someone who’ll be _very_ happy to carry it out, I think... ooo, watch watch watch!”

It was the “kiss upon my lips” line. It was supposed to be a stage kiss—just a quick peck on air near the lips. But from the way Sonoko was squealing...

Then someone screamed.

*********************************************************************************************************

_What the... how...?_

Eta stared, ignoring the Suzuki girl’s muttering about undeflated egos and stuck-up detectives. She just stared at the face that had been revealed from under the black crow helmet.

Kudo Shinichi.

There had been a bizarre moment before where some dark-skinned boy had turned up pretending to be Shinichi. “Conan” too had seemed singularly unimpressed with that... but there was something odd about him too. He looked different, and felt _wrong._

Kudo Shinichi was full-size... _how_?! Admittedly, he was protecting Sherry, so she was presumably working on an antidote, but...

 _That little idiot,_ she thought, a cold fear gripping her. _If word gets out that he’s alive, Gin..._ Gin was the type who would hold a grudge against someone for surviving when he thought he’d killed them. If Gin found out that he was alive, that state of affairs would not last. He would die, as would those around him...

She stared at Ran, who seemed unable to keep her eyes off of Shinichi as he methodically went through his deduction.

 _They will all die,_ she thought. _I can’t let that happen..._

She still couldn’t decide whether Shinichi or Kaito was the true Silver Bullet. Both had caused admirable amounts of trouble for the Syndicate so far, and both were possessed by a fire to cause far more. But what she did know was that she could never risk losing either ever again, nor their Angels. It had hurt so much to think that Shinichi had died. She had to protect them... and help them.

She got the fright of her life when Shinichi collapsed. She was later thankful that it wasn’t out of Dr Ariade’s character to rush to the side of an ill student.


	19. Chapter 19

**_ One Year Ago _ **

_Great. Just great. Who are_ these _clowns?_

It was a small world, Eta mused; not only did she run into that “English teacher”—really, after so long, did the FBI not think she could recognize an agent when she saw one?—but on the bus, who had there been but Edogawa Conan and friends?

Eta shouldn’t have been surprised that the bus would be subsequently hijacked. Really, the only thing to make it _more_ likely would be if Kuroba Kaito had been there as well, although Eta would later revise her opinion to that his crazy-good luck might actually be enough to cancel out his doppelganger’s bad luck. For pity’s sake, since shrinking alone the poor boy must have dealt with more murders than most cops came across in years. Some cops, in fact, had been whispering and calling the boy a shinigami like Mori.

That was foolish, Eta knew. She felt sorry for him, but it was simply how things were. To say that he was a shinigami implied that murders happened because he was present, or that he was drawn to the scenes of murders; but neither was the case. It was simply that murders happened, and he was there, and these things could not be otherwise. Just like Kaito’s good luck; he could not be caught, it was as simple as that. The world, Eta had come to realize, however strongly it may be irritated by that annoying little rash known as humans, was still very adept at organizing itself to suit its own purposes. The world would arrange itself so that Kudo Shinichi would be present to solve the murder, just as the world would arrange itself so that the Kaitou Kid would escape.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t here to make his escape today. Eta couldn’t tell how the men could apparently see out of the back of their heads any more than Shinichi could, which was why, until he figured it out, she really, really, wished he’d stay—

Crap. He’d crawled down to check out the bags, and they’d seen him...

“You really wanna die, kid?” the man growled.  Eta felt hidden rage ignite at the sight of _that man_ pointing a gun at her boy, a dead man within two minutes, she could kill both of them in no time, but that would blow her cover...

She did the only thing she could think of, in character with both herself and Ariade; she threw herself between Shinichi and the gunner, yelling “Stop it! He’s only a little boy fooling around! The police are complying with your demands! Don’t you think they might not be as cooperative if you start _shooting children_?!”

She could feel Shinichi behind her outstretched arm. Most children, faced with a gun, would be terrified, but he wasn’t trembling; she felt that he was probably glaring at the hijackers with his intense blue stare...

 _My brave boy,_ she thought, staring down the barrel of the gun. _My brave, stupid boy... if he fires that, this disguise is done anyway, so might as well just kill them both if he intends to..._

Thankfully, the other hijacker cautioned his irate partner not to fire. Eta sat back down with a relieved sigh. Between Jodie and Shinichi, she was terrified that _someone_ was going to get shot, and if a shot went astray and hit those bags...

The boy sat in silence after that, thank heavens. Eta mused on how to get out of the predicament, but there wasn’t much she could do without exposing herself. She wondered if the FBI girl would be carrying a gun. Eta could probably take them both out with a couple of bullets. She was a dead shot, had been for a long time...

“You! The guy with the cough and the geek with the glasses!”

Oh, yes. Akai Shuuichi was on the bus too, dammit. Out of everyone there, Eta figured that he was the one most likely to catch her out. Another reason to be careful. As she stood up, she saw Jodie subtly reach down and pick up a notebook, opening it to the marked page.

_Do you have a lipstick?_

Eta saw Jodie toss a tube of lipstick backwards, caught by Shinichi, who grinned triumphantly. He was planning something with the FBI—their “ **Cool Kid** ”.

 _One tube of lipstick, huh?_ she thought, docilely complying with the hijackers’ demands. _Show me some magic... **Cool Guy**._

*********************************************************************************************************

_I thought they were Holmes and Lupin, but I may revise that to Bond and Lupin..._

Once again, Eta thanked the stars that it was far from out of Ariade’s character to fuss over Conan’s wound.

The boy really was a magician. Not a Kid-like stage magician, but he’d certainly worked some kind of magic in that bus. Adults probably never realized just how much regard they gave the boy. He’d stopped the bus, taken out one of the hijackers, been saved from the other by the FBI girl, and then rescued a girl who had stayed behind on the bus—Sherry, Eta was sure. She must have sensed Eta there and gotten frightened enough to try suicide. Eta almost wished that Shinichi hadn’t gone back into the bus. He wouldn’t have risked getting blown up and Sherry would be dead, saving Eta a lot of work.

It had been incredible, though. In under ten seconds, he had realized her absence, returned to the bus, shot out the window, grabbed the girl and made it out very literally in the nick of time. He had once more proven himself fearless and versatile, a worthy enemy for the Syndicate.

But Kaito was just as fearless, just as versatile, possessed of better luck and more physically capable of facing the Syndicate. Shinichi didn’t know his own limits—or rather, he did, but they were far lower than he thought. In that moment of fear when the gun had been aimed at him, Eta had realized something: that if Shinichi didn’t get the antidote soon, he might not be able to handle the Syndicate.

 _Is this a message telling me to choose?_ Eta wondered. _Do I get to choose my Silver Bullet?_ _I still don’t know which, but... do I have to decide? Before... it’s decided for me...?_


	20. Chapter 20

**_Several months ago_ **

Eta grinned triumphantly. She didn’t enjoy gunning down children, but it helped her to remind herself that this was not a child on the end of her gun; it was a woman who had betrayed the Syndicate, and more importantly, had so nearly completed the research that would further hers and Ushi’s immortality; the woman who had shrunk the boy sleeping next to the injured FBI, and so nearly killed the Silver Bullet in the process...

She whipped her head around as something  _ clunked _ at the back of Jodie’s car. She was just in time to see a dark blur of movement as someone leapt from the boot and over the top of the car, sliding down the windscreen, Calvados’ bullets striking the metal behind her...

“Stop, Calvados!” she shrieked, as she realized just who had leapt. He ignored her, continuing to fire on Mori Ran.

_ Angel... no... _

“ _ Stop _ , Calvados!” she screamed again. “ _ Stop! _ ”

He continued to fire as Angel ran across the asphalt towards Sherry. Bullets cracked into the ground an instant after her foot left the ground.

“Didn’t I tell you to  _ stop _ ?!” she screamed, losing her temper for the first time in years—centuries—and firing at Calvados, hitting the guardrail that he was leaning over perhaps unintentionally.

Angel, not noticing the stop in the bullets, leapt forwards, grabbing Sherry close to her, and they fell to the ground, Angel’s body curved protectively over Sherry. 

Frowning, Eta pointed her gun at the prone pair. “Now, let go of the brown-haired girl,” she demanded. “Hurry unless you want to die!”

Sherry was struggling against the larger girl’s hold, but Angel forced her down, screaming, “No, don’t move!”

“Alright, hurry and move!” Eta screamed, starting to panic. She had to kill Sherry. She  _ had _ to. But... Angel... she couldn’t shoot her... she...

She fired, hitting the ground near Angel’s head.

“Stop!” Angel screamed fearfully. It hurt Eta to hear such fear, to know that it was  _ her _ fault, but if she was scared, perhaps she would run...

_ She didn’t run in New York... _

She fired again and again, just missing Angel, trying to scare her off. But she wouldn’t move.

“I called the police!” Eta heard her cry. “Just hold on a little longer, please!” She was trembling violently, and her voice sounded on the verge of tears. But she wouldn’t run. She wouldn’t stop protecting a girl she barely knew, for reasons she did not understand...

_ She wouldn’t run from a serial killer when her friend was in danger. She’d saved a man who’d tried to kill her... _

_ “Is a reason necessary? I don’t know why you would kill someone, but in helping somebody, there is no need for a logical mind, right?” _

“ _ They’re... _ ”

Eta pulled the trigger again, but the gun just clicked. But what else could she do? She had to make her run...

With shaking hands, she ejected the empty magazine and slammed in another.

“Let her go!” she demanded. Neither Angel nor Sherry moved.

_ I have to kill Sherry... If Calvados sees and tells Ushi... but Angel... Sherry... Angel... Ushi... my Angel... _

“ _ What are you doing? Grab my arm! _ ”

_ “ _ **MOVE IT, ANGEL!** ” She screamed desperately, reverting to English in her fear and fury. Then a shot burned past her arm.

Things just went downhill from there. She barely got away from Jodie and Akai Shuuichi, and she only managed it by taking Shinichi hostage. She’d been so afraid for a moment when she’d done that; what if Akai, cocky bastard that he was, risked a shot and missed? But she made it, albeit with some nasty injuries, and as a mixed blessing Calvados was dead; he couldn’t tell Ushi about her refusal to shoot Angel. Of course, it was a tragedy to lose him. Like his sister, he had been a prodigious shot who would only improve. Nevertheless, cost-to-value…

Still, Ushi must have been able to tell that something was up. Not long after parking in the woods, as Eta collapsed, breathing heavily through her broken ribs, her phone  _ beeped _ with a text.

_ Looks like I’ve given you too much freedom. Come back to my side, Vermouth. _

_ “ _ Okay... boss,” she whispered as she keyed the words in and sent the text.

_ Now...  _ she mused with a little smile, looking down at the sleeping face of the tiny Kudo Shinichi,  _ What to do with this boy who thinks he can do everything...? _

As she placed a gentle hand on his shoulder, though, she felt something odd. She pulled out a knife, tearing his shirt open to find...

_ An electro-cardiogram?! _ she realized.  _ Connected to... a telemeter and a recorder... don’t tell me... the sound of the phone... _

Automatically, she reached out to disconnect the device, but he stopped her when he spoke. 

“If you disconnect that, it’ll look like my heart has stopped,” he said. Eta wondered when he’d woken up. “The text address of your boss’ phone will be transmitted to the police. Phone companies have to protect their customer’s information, but in a police investigation they have to release the information... if it’s not a mobile, we can even get your boss’ address! In other words, even if I’m killed, your boss’ name and address will be known! Well, originally I’d figured that if you captured ‘Sherry’, you’d bring her to your boss... Jodie-sensei’s intervention meant that I had to improvise, but it’s worked out.” He put a thumb under the electrode wires, tugging them gently. “If you don’t want me to transmit, take me to your boss! Let’s decide this once and for all, Vermouth! No more hide and seek!”

_ That’s right, _ she thought, suddenly smiling.  _ No more games... not with yours and the Angel’s lives... _

“All right, I lose,” she said, pulling out her mobile again. “I’ll give up on Sherry...”  _ I can’t risk the investigation finding you, after all... _ she fired out the sleeping gas, grabbing his hands to keep him from transmitting. “Just sleeping gas, don’t worry...”

“B-barou,” he coughed. “If you do that... you too...”

“Yes... it’s a gamble...” she said, injecting sleepiness into her voice. “If you wake up first, you’ll restrain me, call the police, and force me to lead you to my boss... and if I wake up first... well, you can guess, right?” He struggled, but in moments, the fire died in his eyes as his eyelids drooped and he slept.

Eta sighed. Gas didn’t affect her. She knew she had to move—his friends nearby would have heard. She shot out the cardiogram, destroying its information, then draped Ariade’s coat over the sleeping boy before pulling herself out of the car and running, panting in pain.

As she lay in the phone booth, waiting for the familiar black Porsche, her mind was spinning. Those two... she was sure of it, it must be them. The bravery to take on the Syndicate...

But...

“ _ Do you know a brat named Kudo Shinichi? _ ”

_ Gin’s onto him, _ she realized.  _ He could find him... and his Angel. If they’re in danger... and he’s just a child now. A brave, brilliant child... but a child. He may not be able to handle this... should I not entrust the Silver Bullet to one who can handle the Syndicate? One whom they cannot find, cannot kill? If I have to choose... I would choose... _


	21. Chapter 21

**_ Now _ **

Eta spent months deciding. She attended every Kid heist, watched Kudo Shinichi and Kuroba Kaito’s every move, and saw.

She saw two young men, one with open possibilities, and one with many restrictions. One who was hidden, and one who, so often, had almost been found.

She couldn’t see him die. She just couldn’t bear it. Not again.

So she decided. The Angel and the Silver Bullet, the ones who would fight the Syndicate and draw together others who would, the ones who would ignite the flames of rebellion... they would not be Kudo Shinichi and Mori Ran.

But how to make Kudo Shinichi give up on the Syndicate? He never would, not as long as he lived and breathed. To be safe, he had to forget. It was the only way.

And it worked. She had mixed the Amnesial perfectly, she knew. So surely, he could never remember?

The world always righted itself. So would he. The Silver Bullet was not just a person, nor was the Angel; they were forces of nature. They could not be held back, their course could not be redirected.

People thought of natural forces as wind and gravity. But just the same, so were justice and love; invisible powers that nevertheless directed people powerfully and inexorably. Mere herbs and liquids could not redirect the physical incarnation of such a powerful force of nature.

Eta wondered if she had been wrong, when she remembered; in her dream, the Silver Bullet did not start as a bullet. He was a coin. Heads and tails, both were necessary.

Twins of destiny. The two physical forces of justice. Powerful alone, together... enough to fight the shadows of the Syndicate.

Enough to obliterate them.

**

_The darkness is powerful, and always wins. But at the heart of its strength lies weakness. The light of a single candle is enough to hold it back._

_Love is not a candle._

_Love can ignite the stars._


	22. Historical Notes (In case anybody cares)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eta and Ushi's lives were ten thousand years long, and I spent like... at least three hours googling information about relevant locations and time periods. Here's some of the notes that I kept about each section, in case you were wondering where they were at any given time.

**_ Chapter one—ten thousand years ago _ **

Eta and Ushi’s story begins in 8000 BC, Southern England, which is why their native language is English, though the English of today will be almost utterly unrecognizable compared to what it was back then. However, the one time that Vermouth really loses her rag she speaks English, so English, I knew, it would have to be. This was still in pretty much the stone age; this was the earliest days of tribes and society, such as their tiny farming village. Many tribes were still nomadic, rather than settling to begin farming. Britain still contained such wild animals as wolves and bears which are now long extinct on the island. Eta and Ushi’s ages are not given, but they are likely to be around fifteen for Eta and maybe eighteen for Ushi; girls were generally attached very young back then, not long after they became physically capable of bearing children (I may be overestimating the ages still; in Ancient Egypt, which didn’t even have nomads yet at this point, most girls had their first child at the age of thirteen), and boys at a few years older. Even making it to thirty was considered a tremendous lifespan, and making it long enough to see grey hairs made you almost magical; there were, worldwide, primitive religions which generally worshipped the forces of nature, the powers of animals, and the oldest members of the tribe.

**_ Chapter two—eight thousand years ago _ **

 The earliest group dwellings large enough to be recognizable as cities were being formed around this time, although they were more to the east. Britain and most of Europe still worked as small farming communities. However, the earliest evidence of warfare also dates from this time; a pit was found in Germany in the nineteen-thirties containing the skeletons of about forty people, dating to 5500-6500 BC. All of their skulls had been smashed with farming tools. Thus, inter-tribe warfare, as described in the case of the destruction of Eta and Ushi’s village, did exist, mainly warring over resources; jewels of any sort were rare, as nobody really had the knowledge or means to find and mine for them, and as such something such as the Pandora would be a valuable trophy indeed.

**_ Chapter three—seven and a half thousand years ago _ **

 The village that Eta and Ushi reach, as many guessed, was on the banks of the River Nile in what was to become Egypt; the country itself had not formed yet, but large bands of nomads had for some time been making home on the banks of the river, which provided incredible fertility in the middle of the dry desert. They came from the Middle East, generally, which had already long been building the houses that Eta had described; while huts in Britain and Northern Europe had slanted roofs to deal with the generally wet weather, houses in Egypt and the Middle East had flat roofs, as they had no need to worry about rain and these roofs, especially when painted white, reflected the heat of the sun far better. Anyone who could survive the heat of the desert without immense provisions would have certainly been seen as magical!

**_ Chapter four—five thousand years ago _ **

Eta and Ushi are in ancient Japan this time, around the Jomon Era, as indicated by the pottery; a distinctive type of pottery was practiced at this time, which Eta describes a product of. Trade lines were forming worldwide, although they were generally very self-contained due to the lack of wide travel, and with the Americas and Australia developing entirely independently from the vast, interconnected mass of Eurasia and Africa. Japan was also expanding rapidly at this time due to a population explosion.

**_ Chapter five—two and a half thousand years ago _ **

The ancient Greek civilisation was a fairly full swing by this point, and like any mature civilisation they were at war- with, as the man mentioned at the start of the chapter, Persia. They were to beat back these attacks, due to the power of the Athenian Army and the militaristic satellite state of Sparta (yes, _THIS IS SPARTA!_ ) but eventually be defeated by the Roman Empire. The Pandora myth is real (at least, not made up by me), and is among the Greek creationist stories. There are visible parallels to the story of Adam and Eve, which it probably in part inspired. You may have heard the story of the God Prometheus, who had a fondness for humans, stealing fire from the Gods on Mount Olympus and presenting it to men, and as punishment being chained to a rock to have his liver torn out by a hawk every day for all eternity (being a God, it grew back each night). Zeus did not only punish Prometheus, however; he also punished the humans by creating the woman Pandora (women had not previously existed). He made her beautiful to tempt men to madness, and also gave her the curse of curiosity (don’t you just love the totally not subtle misogynist tones of ancient myth?). He also gave her the gift of a sealed urn, with the express warning not to open it; eventually, of course, her curiosity overwhelmed her and she opened the urn (changed to a box in later translations and artwork), unleashing all of the evils and ills of the world upon mankind, rather as Eve did by tempting Adam to eat the fruit of knowledge. Shocked at what she had done, Pandora hurriedly closed the urn, but what she trapped inside was none of the evils but Hope, which remains locked away from mankind to this day. Pandora’s Box is now a popular allegory for the forbidden, or that which will only bring suffering. Anesidora was also a name by which she was known.

**_ Two thousand years ago _ **

 This chapter is pretty much the only religious reference I’ve made, historically, since I don’t know much about any religion beyond Christianity (RMPS is still so biased). Bible-buffs may recognize the story of Jesus losing his rag and destroying a market which had set up in a temple. I’m not religious myself, but there are brief mentions made by Roman historians of a  Jewish Philosopher had travelled the Middle East around this time, attempting to spread Humanitarian principles (though stories such as walking on water and feeding a thousand people from one person’s lunch seem to me to be precisely the kind of fairy tales which grow up around respected figures, especially when their stories exist only as oral tradition for three hundred years—as Hakuba mentioned at one point, a story can mutate terribly even when told by an eyewitness, as they misremember details or deliberately exaggerate something in order to impress; a story handed down over generations would be distorted almost beyond recognition or reality), and was killed for it, as most Jews were at the time. (Why is it all cultures, at some point or another, go through a patch of killing Jews? What is it, like culture puberty?) The Roman Empire was peaking in power around this point as well, the cultures of ancient Egypt and Greece having already been long conquered.

**_ Chapter six—one and a half thousand years ago _ **

Well, closer to 1600 years ago, really; the attack of which Eta and Ushi are discussing is the Sack of Rome in 410. The last time Rome had fallen had been over 800 years previously. There were three sieges, the third ending when a slave revolt opened the Salarian Gate, allowing the Visigoth army to pour into the city and spend three days looting. In this story, it is implied that Ushi, at the beginnings of the power that he would later enjoy as leader of the Shadow Syndicate, had in fact deliberately instigated this revolt so that the looting would reveal where the jewel was hidden, if anywhere. This was a marked point in the decline of the Roman Empire; Rome was to be sacked again less than fifty years later, and within a century the Empire had fallen.

**_ Chapter seven—One thousand years ago _ **

Eta and Ushi now travel to North America; for millennia, this was only possible in the dead of winter, when the icecaps at the North Pole expanded and linked the northernmost points of Alaska and Russia, though by this point in time Viking expeditions had definitely reached Greenland and may have penetrated further into the continent. Cut off from the development in Asia and Europe, the Americas still retained mostly tribal cultures, such as the Native American tribes; further south, the cultures of the Inca and the Aztecs were still to flourish for nearly five centuries before being destroyed by Europeans. (I had wanted to put at least one of these in, particularly in regards to Aztec human sacrifices, but I could never make it work on the timeline.) Every Native American tribe is different, to the point where they all have similar but ultimately distinct languages; all practiced some form of religion based on the spirits of nature, however, as well as herbal medicine, and most had elders who practiced some form of divination, as the old lady does with the smoke. Eta and Ushi’s colouring is also brought up here; the very northern European Aryan look of blonde hair and blue eyes, as well as fair skin. This colouring was highly unusual in many parts of the world at the time; the peoples of Asia and the Americas were, almost without exception, dark-haired and dark-eyed. This colouring would stand out even more among the Aboriginal peoples of Australia or the ancient African tribes, which had far darker skin as well. Dark hair and eyes flourished everywhere in the world except in, for some reason, Europe, which is the homeland of both the Aryan colouring and the Gallic colouring of red hair and green eyes.

**_ Chapter eight—Five hundred years ago _ **

Eta and Ushi have returned to England; the King that they are toasting is King Henry VIII, who was crowned on April 21st of 1509. He is most well known for having six wives, killing two, divorcing two, one dying in childbirth to his only son and the last living to be his widow; he was effectively the last true English king, as his son died very young of illness while caretakers ran the country between his father’s deaths and his, and neither of his half-sisters, during their times as queen, had any children. The throne passed to King James VI of Scotland eventually, in the Union of the Crowns, which finally united Scotland and England after centuries of enmity and warfare, essentially through Scotland taking over England (not that Scotland benefited at all from that arrangement). All British monarchs now are descended from King James VI and his mother, Mary, Queen of Scots. It is around this time that the Christian Church split into Catholicism and Protestantism, starting five hundred years of bloody internal warfare that continues today in Ireland and Glasgow. For centuries, whichever side the reigning monarch was aligned with was deemed the “right” one, and all those of the opposite alignment had to convert or be executed; many chose the latter, though many also chose the former, and most pretended to choose the former to survive until a supporting monarch took power.

Eta also remembers the mediaeval witch hunts, which were in fact continuing at this time. Men and women (mostly women) accused of witchcraft were burned in England and America and hung in Scotland; criteria included making herbal medicine, forming bonds with animals, and predicting the outcomes of relationships, to take some of the less arbitrary markers of witchcraft. Those who would not confess were tortured until they confessed, at which point they were executed; doing so somehow saved the witch’s soul, sending them to Heaven. It is difficult to imagine how one who stands out as Eta would do escaping accusations.

The final paragraph mentions a shogun who is losing a war; Japan was in the Sengoku era, several centuries of feudal internal war as lords fought for land and gold. This horde that he buries to hide from the oncoming enemy may well be the “Hidden Treasures of the Tokugawa Shoguns” that the Shonen Tantei-Dan have been known to imagine finding.

There is also reference to the “Philosopher’s Stone”; in mediaeval to renaissance times, many alchemists searched for the Philosopher’s stone, a substance which was believed to be the secret ingredient in transforming lead into gold. Many alchemists thought, for a long time, that sulphur was the key because it was yellow, like gold, and performed endless varying experiments with it. It is unknown where the idea that it also produced the Elixir of Immortality came from, but once it appeared it spread very fast. There are many different descriptions of what the Philosopher’s Stone may look like, but I’m sure I’m not the only one who visualized the rough red rock from the first Harry Potter book (Which was, bizarrely, retitled _The Sorcerer’s Stone_ in America, effectively cutting it off from the history and mythos which gave the book so much more meaning such as the tale of Nicholas and Perenelle Flamel, who really did exist and were rumoured to have truly created the Philosopher’s Stone and achieved immortality in the fourteenth century), thus making it a parallel to the Pandora legend (which was probably in fact derived from the legend of the Philosopher’s Stone). As Eta mentioned, scores of charlatans sought to take advantage of this legend, the most successful appearing at a banquet of rich lords claiming to have a stone; he said that he would multiply any gold presented to him. After being presented with a very large amount of gold indeed, he opened the box that he had said contained the stone; it in fact contained a smokebomb, behind which he made his escape with the gold. A possible ancestor of Kaito’s? With those blue eyes, he must have somebody European in his lineage somewhere.

**_ Chapter nine—two hundred years ago _ **

1809—This was the year that James Madison became the fourth president of the USA. At the time, as Eta mentions, there were only 21 states. The Napoleonic Wars were also in their tenth year, with six left to go. The French Revolution which Eta refers to began on the 14th of July, 1789, with the storming of the Bastille Prison in Paris; after centuries of revolts squashed and an unbelievable gap between the rich and poor, the people of France took power in this bloody war, which, despite the guillotining of the king in January 1793, continued until 1799, by which point thousands of heads had rolled in revolution, counter-revolution and counter-counter-revolution. With all of this upheaval, it is likely that Eta and Ushi would have up on the guillotine sooner or later. They are in no specific country at this point, but given the toast and the news about the French—who had assisted the Americans in their own revolution over thirty years before, and whose revolution had been a result of the American’s success—it is probably somewhere in America.

In the chapter, Ushi receives a telegram; official telegrams were not to be patented for some years yet, but a young man named Campillo in Italy had in fact finished a working design, but had been unable to afford a patent. It is not difficult to imagine a shadowy figure slipping away with rejected designs, giving Ushi a completely private means of communication with what by this point will be the Shadow Syndicate in formation.

**_ Chapter ten—fifty years ago _ **

A massive jump forwards into nearly the present day, and a lot has happened in the meantime; the explanation of the alcoholic codenames is traced back to Prohibition in America in the twenties, when alcohol was banned with little success—gangsters still trafficked in alcohol, the most successful and famous, of course, being Al Capone, who despite basically owning crime in Chicago, was sent to Alcatraz for tax evasion (something attributed here to the notion that he was, in fact, merely a more public member of the Syndicate, and that Ushi arranged his conviction when he either got too full of himself or was no longer necessary). What became of Al Capone’s vast wealth, the majority of which disappeared upon his death, is still a mystery; Geraldo Rivera hosted a much-hyped TV special in 1986 where he opened a hidden vault believed to contain the wealth, but in fact only contained a few empty liquor bottles. It is alluded to here that the money was in fact taken by the Shadow Syndicate.

They are in Japan at this point, meeting Sherry’s grandfather (her father’s name is mentioned), as well as Applejack and Cider, who some may have guessed are Gin’s parents, both bearing psychological scarring as a result of the Second World war, which had ended fourteen years before but which was still affecting the world. Pisco too is mentioned. This is also the confirmation that Eta and Ushi are, yes, Vermouth and the Boss of the Organization—Red Rum. This is probably the earliest point where manga history appears, merging with real history.

**_ Chapter eleven—forty years ago _ **

This chapter tells the truth behind the Crow Association massacre mentioned in volume 30 of the manga, when detectives gather at the Sunset Manor under the premise of being invited by the Kaitou Kid (this is Hakuba’s first appearance in DC). Karasuma Renya is given to be a Syndicate member who had stolen a fortune, and the two mystery travellers who brought “marijuana… spiked with something else” are shown to be Eta and Ushi.

**_ Chapter twelve—thirty-five to thirty years ago _ **

This chapter deals with what became of Gin’s family, his parents and sister, and Sherry’s parents’ wedding is also mentioned. Gin’s sister’s name is not properly given, only a nevertheless very telling nickname. It is mentioned that Gin’s father was the one who revealed the Dream to Ushi, accidentally discussing one of his wife’s prophetic dreams, though he quickly realized what he had done and altered the explanation only to say that it was a Japanese boy who would become the Syndicate-destroying Silver Bullet. Ushi now knows about the Silver Bullet, though he, unlike Eta, does not know what he will look like; and he knows nothing of the Angel.

**_ Chapter thirteen—twenty-three to twenty-two years ago _ **

This chapter contains two fateful meetings, explaining the origins of the persona of “Sharon Vineyard” and how she came to know Kuroba Toichi and Fujimine Yukiko; fateful because they are two of the four who are to become, as it were, the parents of her son. An image of her children is also mentioned, one that Toichi, at least, will not forget.

**_ Chapter fourteen—twenty years ago _ **

A very quick mention of Jodie’s parents’ deaths is mentioned at the beginning of this chapter. The origins of the Kaitou Kid are also dealt with, as in fact created by Eta’s first attempt to recruit Toichi to the Syndicate in order to keep him and his possible descendants close to her—though at this time he was, of course, not known as the Kaitou Kid and it is implied that many staple features of his heists, most notably the hanglider, were added later, which is why Snakebite, initially, does not know that he is Kuroba Toichi nor that he rejected the Syndicate once before.

**_ Chapter fifteen—ten years ago _ **

Fast-forward to Toichi’s death, his identity apparently deduced due to an injudicious comment made by Eta about the Kaitou Kid. It is also mentioned that Eta has seen her son in both Kaito and Shinichi, and also sees her daughter in Aoko as the Angel. She has clearly not yet seen Ran, as the appearance of Aoko leads her to decide that Kaito may be the Silver Bullet.

**_ Chapter sixteen—three years ago _ **

This one, of course, takes place during the Golden Apple flashback arc, by which point Eta is starting to keep up the facades of both Chris and Sharon Vineyard. This is where she meets Ran for the first time, and is shocked to find out that not only do there appear to be two Silver Bullets, but two Angels. This is a highly important scene to reinterpret from Eta’s POV, and was a lot of fun to write XD

**_ Chapter seventeen—two years ago _ **

This clearly takes place at the times when Shinichi first shrinks and the whole Haido Hotel business. This episode only serves to further confuse Eta as to who is the true Silver Bullet—but thinking that Shinichi had died once is enough to intensify her desire to protect them.

**_ Chapter eighteen—a year and a half ago _ **

 The school play incident, the first time that Shinichi returns to his own body via an antidote. Further confusion for Eta, who by this point is disguised as Dr Ariade (why am I still doing notes for these chapters? I’m just rehashing events that happened in full in the manga from a more revelatory POV).

**_ Chapter nineteen—One year ago _ **

The busjacking case. This is when Eta first begins to have second thoughts about letting Shinichi fight the Syndicate, as this is the first time she’s seen him handle a case in his kiddy body and thus been exposed to his limitations. She also entertains the notion that perhaps there are two Silver Bullets as a failsafe, and that she may have to choose which will be the true Silver Bullet. (Aoko and Ran don’t cause as much trouble as the boys, so she is not worrying about them; in any case, she may be interpreting the dream as to mean that their role comes after the shooting has ended).

**_ Chapter twenty—several months ago _ **

The Monster Party incident, which is one of the most revealingly enigmatic cases for Eta. Her inner turmoil between her love for her “children” and her love for Ushi, which still exists after everything, is evident, as well as the true reason for her flashbacks—and the point where she finally decided that, perhaps, Shinichi needs to be taken out of the game.

 

Eta’s name was derived from the English word “Eternity”, although one could argue that the word may have been derived from her name. Only when researching other possible meanings for the name for the riddle did I discover the vast number of alternative meanings it has, from places to features of subatomic physics. It is also apparently a highly derogatory term for a group called the Burakumin, for which I apologize. I have also been informed that it means “Case” in Vietnamese.

Ushi’s name was derived from the Japanese word “Fushi”, meaning “immortality”, from which Mt Fuji’s name also derives. It doesn’t have much in the way of alternative meanings, thankfully, though apparently it means “Ox” in Vietnamese.

Since writing this, I’ve learned enough about history and human development to realize that if Eta—Vermouth—were really ten thousand years old, then there is no chance she’d look like a human today, nor would Ushi—both of them would be much shorter, with their limbs and facial features very differently proportioned to people today. Er… my excuse is that the Pandora serum has been continuously augmenting their bodies this whole time, even as its power weakens. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it XD (I am probably the only person to have ever worried about this in relation to this fic.)


End file.
